Stock Chart Patterns for Day Trading: How to Trade Each One and How Often It Fails

Stock chart patterns are the shapes price leaves when buyers and sellers fight over a level. This guide covers the day trading chart patterns worth knowing, by family, with the trigger, stop and target for each and how often each one fails. The printable chart patterns cheat sheet puts every row on one page.

Quick Answer

What Are Chart Patterns, and How Do They Differ From Candlestick Patterns?

A chart pattern is multi-bar structure drawn with lines, like a neckline, that price has to close through. A candlestick pattern is one to three candles, such as a hammer, an engulfing bar or a doji, and where it prints decides what it means. The candlestick patterns guide covers that family.

The same shapes form in stocks, forex, crypto and futures. All of them sit on support and resistance, and most need cleanly drawn trendlines. Volume and VWAP can back up a break. Neither can make one, and the indicators guide covers the rest.

Which Continuation Patterns Do Day Traders Trade Most?

The continuation patterns day trading guides list most are flags, pennants, ascending and descending triangles and the cup and handle, and fewer add the rectangle. Each is a pause inside a trend, and guides expect that trend to resume. In an uptrend they are the bullish chart patterns a momentum trading strategy trades. Flip them for a downtrend.

Bull flag and bear flag

A steep pole, then a tight drift against it on fading volume. Trigger: a close through the flag line, the pole's way. A bear flag is the mirror. In Bulkowski's flag data, 44% of upward breakouts failed to move 5%, measured on the short swing after the break, and he does not rank flags against other patterns. The bull flag guide covers both.

Pennant

Same pole, but the pause is a small triangle instead of a channel. In Bulkowski's pennants, 54% of breakouts failed to move 5% on the same short-swing measure. The pennant pattern guide has the details.

Ascending triangle

Rising lows pressing into a flat ceiling. It broke up 63% of the time, about 64% of the way to the apex (ascending triangle data), so one still coiling at its tip is late. The ascending triangle guide has entries.

Descending triangle

The mirror: falling highs over a flat floor. Most sheets call it bearish, yet Bulkowski's descending triangles broke upward 53% of the time. Let the prior trend and the close decide. The descending triangle walkthrough covers both breaks.

Rectangle and price channels

Flat top, flat bottom, two or more touches each. Rectangles broke up 59% (bottoms) to 63% (tops) of the time and hit the full measured move on 78% to 79% of upward breaks. The price channel guide covers the sloped version.

Cup and handle

A rounded base, then a short handle in the upper half of the cup. Only 5% of Bulkowski's cups failed, but he defines the cup as 7 to 65 weeks long, so a 5-minute cup is a scaled copy. More in the cup and handle guide.

Which Reversal Patterns Matter Intraday?

The reversal patterns that matter intraday are head and shoulders and its inverse, double and triple tops and bottoms, rising and falling wedges and, as context, the rounding bottom. Head and shoulders and the double and triple patterns need a real trend to reverse: the bearish chart patterns top a climb, and their bullish mirrors end a drop. Wedges can follow a move either way.

Head and shoulders and the inverse

Three peaks, the middle highest. Bulkowski confirms the top on a close below the neckline (head and shoulders tops). Volume fading from the left shoulder showed up in 61% of them, so treat it as a tendency. The inverse failed to move 5% only 11% of the time (bottoms). See the head and shoulders guide.

Double and triple tops and bottoms

Two tests of one level, split by a swing and confirmed on a close through it. Double-top peaks often sit within 3% of each other, and a third test makes a triple. In his rounded-turn variant, bottoms failed 12% of the time (bottoms) and tops 20% (tops). The double top guide covers triples.

Rising and falling wedges

Both lines tilt the same way as they squeeze together. In a triangle they slope toward each other, or one stays flat. Rising wedges broke down 60% of the time (rising) and falling wedges up 68% (falling), in either trend. The wedge guide has the tell.

Rounding bottom

A slow saucer with no handle. It gets filed as a reversal, but price trended up into 67% of Bulkowski's rounding bottoms, so two in three act as continuations. It is a daily and weekly pattern. On a 5-minute chart, treat it as context, not a trigger. See the rounding bottom guide.

Which Patterns Let the Break Decide, and How Do Traps Catch Traders?

The symmetrical triangle and the broadening formation can break either way, so the break decides, and gaps open in either direction. Traps are breaks that fail.

Symmetrical triangle

Lower highs and higher lows converging. It broke up 60% of the time, typically 74% of the way to the apex, and did better on heavy breakout volume (symmetrical triangles). The triangle guide pairs it with the descending one.

Broadening formation

Higher highs and lower lows at once. Its failure rates are modest (18% to 27% in broadening tops). The trouble is whipsaw: the range keeps widening and stops end up far away. The broadening formation guide says when to stand aside.

Gaps

On daily charts, Bulkowski found common gaps closed within a week 85% to 90% of the time and breakaway gaps 1% (gap data). His caveat: by the time you can name a gap, most of the move is done. The guide to the four gap types sorts them.

Bull traps, bear traps and the dead cat bounce

A trap pokes through an obvious level, then closes back inside. Watch for no close beyond the level, light volume, a long wick and a fast snap back. The bull trap and bear trap guide covers them live. A dead cat bounce is the slow version: a short rally in a downtrend that rolls over and breaks the prior low.

What Is the Trigger, Stop and Target for Each Pattern?

Each row gives the line a candle has to close through, the level the stop goes past, and the measured move with how often Bulkowski saw price cover all of his version of it. On most rows he projects the height from the breakout. For a flag or pennant he projects the pole from its far side, a nearer target.

Treat the target as an estimate. Price covered even Bulkowski's nearer flag target on only 46% of flags, so check that a flag trade still clears 2R to it. Size from the stop: your dollar risk divided by the stop distance is your share count. Under 2R to the target, skip it. The double rows use his rounded-turn variant, and the cheat sheet's failure table has the rest.

Should You Wait for a Retest After a Breakout?

You can, and the retest usually comes. In Bulkowski's daily and weekly data, price came back to the breakout within 30 days on 58% (descending triangles breaking down) to 74% (falling wedges breaking down) of breakouts. The catch, which he notes page after page, is that the breakouts that came back went on to smaller moves.

Either way, a break is a candle close through the line on volume above what the pattern traded. A wick is not a close, and neither is price above the line with two minutes left in the bar. ChartSchool's flag and pennant page asks for the same volume expansion.

A retest entry often carries a tighter stop, but you miss the breakouts that never come back. Pick your entry before the break. The break and retest vs breakout comparison walks through both.

Do Chart Patterns Work on 1- and 5-Minute Charts?

They form there, as on any 1- to 30-minute chart, and the trigger, stop and target work the same way. The most-cited evidence does not carry over.

None of the sources behind this page, Bulkowski included, publishes a win rate after costs. The 85% to 89% "success rates" quoted online are mostly 100 minus a Bulkowski failure rate: the inverse head and shoulders' "89%" is his 11% flipped, which only says price got 5% past the breakout at some point. Lo, Mamaysky and Wang (NBER, 2000) found shapes like head and shoulders carried "incremental information" in daily US stock returns from 1962 to 1996. Information is not profit after costs.

And every other pattern percentage on this page is Bulkowski's, from daily and weekly charts. His flagpole should last several days, so a 5-minute flag is a scaled copy. Higher timeframes carry more weight, so check the next one up first.

Start with two or three patterns. Practice on replay or at small size, and journal every one. A hundred of your own trades beat any table, this one included.

How Do You Check a Pattern on the Chart You Have Open?

A worked 5-minute bull flag, with round, made-up prices (an illustration, not a real ticker or trade).

The five-step check, on that chart and on yours:

1. Name the trend on the next timeframe up. A 5-minute flag in a 15-minute downtrend is a bounce. Pass.
2. Mark the line the pattern has to break. Here, the flag's upper line.
3. Wait for a close through it on volume above the pattern's own. The trigger bar closes at $10.90 on its biggest volume since the pole.
4. Put the stop past the level that proves it wrong, then measure. Stop at $10.55, under the $10.60 flag low. The $1.00 pole added to the break puts the classic target at $11.90: risk $0.35, reward $1.00, 2.9R. Bulkowski's nearer target, the pole added to the flag low, is $11.60: still 2R. Under 2R, skip it.
5. Decide now: the break or the retest. The retest usually comes, and the move after it is usually smaller.

What SnapPChart does with that chart: its AI chart analysis grades the one screenshot you upload. It does not scan the market or name most chart patterns (the FAQ below lists which). It treats a strong pole with a small flag on lower volume as a direction cue and judges a reversal shape against the trend it fights. The AI chart pattern detection guide explains why most shapes go unlabeled, and the AI trading guide covers the limits.