Chart Patterns Cheat Sheet: Confirmation and Invalidation for Every Pattern
One row per pattern: the shape, the event that confirms it, the event that kills it, and the measured-move rule for the target. Two tables, thirteen entries.
Most pattern references stop at the picture, which is the easy half. The half that decides whether the trade works is the other three columns: the event that actually confirms the pattern, the event that kills it, and where the measured move points once it triggers. So that is how this page is built. Four columns, one row per pattern, thirteen entries across two tables, close enough to a lookup table that you can check a live chart against it in about ten seconds.
One redirect before the tables. If you came here for candlestick patterns, the doji and hammer and engulfing family, that is a different animal and this format does not serve it well. With one to three candles the shape carries much less information than the location, so the same drawing at support and mid-range are unrelated trades. The candlestick patterns guide handles those in context instead.
Quick Answer
Every entry below is written as four things: the shape, the price-and-volume event that confirms it, the event that invalidates it, and the measured-move rule for the target. Bullish patterns are in the first table, bearish and false-breakout patterns in the second. Not one of them is confirmed by a shape. Every confirmation trigger here is a close through a specific line, almost always with a volume expansion behind it, which is the single filter that separates a pattern you can trade from a drawing you liked. To keep a copy, print this page from your browser with Ctrl+P, or Cmd+P on a Mac. There is no file to download.
Match the Shape First
Twelve of the thirteen shapes are below at silhouette scale, which is roughly how they look when you are scanning a watchlist rather than studying one chart. Find the shape, take the name, then go read that row in the table. The bull trap is not drawn because it is the bear trap flipped upside down.
Twelve silhouettes, green for the bullish read, red for the bearish one
Bullish Chart Patterns: Confirmation, Invalidation, Target
Continuation and breakout setups first, then the three bullish reversals. The measured-target column is the standard formula for each pattern, and it is a projection from the pattern's own geometry rather than a forecast.
| Pattern | Shape | Confirmation trigger | Invalidation trigger | Measured target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bull Flag | Sharp near-vertical pole up, then a tight pullback channel drifting slightly lower on fading volume. | A close above the flag's upper trendline with volume clearly above the flag's own average. | The pullback retraces more than 50% of the pole, or the flag grinds past roughly 8 to 10 bars without breaking. | Pole height added to the breakout price. |
| Cup and Handle | Rounded U-shaped base, then a short shallow drift lower that stays in the upper third of the cup. | A close above the cup's rim on a volume surge, usually the same candle that clears the handle's high. | The handle drops below the cup's midpoint, or the rim break closes back under the rim. | Cup depth (rim down to the base) added to the rim. |
| Ascending Triangle | Flat resistance ceiling with a rising trendline of higher lows underneath it. | A close through the flat ceiling on expanding volume, ideally in the final third of the pattern. | A close below the rising lower trendline, or a break of the most recent higher low. | Triangle height (ceiling minus the pattern's lowest low) added to the breakout point. |
| Falling Wedge | Two down-sloping trendlines converging, upper line steeper, range narrowing as price grinds lower. | A close above the upper trendline with volume expanding after the contraction inside the wedge. | A close below the lower trendline, or a break that immediately loses the line on the retest. | Height at the widest part of the wedge projected up from the break. |
| Double Bottom | Two lows at roughly the same price (1% to 2% apart is normal), separated by one swing high. | A close above the neckline, meaning the swing high between the two lows, on rising volume. | A third low that breaks under the pair, or a neckline break that closes back below the neckline. | Distance from the lows up to the neckline, added above the neckline. |
| Inverse Head and Shoulders | Three troughs, the middle one deepest, the two outer ones shallower and roughly level with each other. | A close above the neckline drawn across the two intervening peaks, with volume spiking on the break. | A close back below the right shoulder's low, or a neckline break on flat volume that fades within a bar or two. | Head-to-neckline distance projected up from the break. |
| Rounding Bottom (Saucer) | Slow U-shaped base with no handle. Volume heavy into the low, quiet at the bottom, building on the right side. | A close above the rim, the resistance left behind on the far side of the curve, on rising volume. | Price rolls back under the midpoint of the right side of the curve. A base that never clears the rim stays a base. | Depth from the rim down to the low, added to the rim. |
The row people misread is the bull flag, and always in the same direction: they treat the flagpole as the signal and enter during the pullback, before the flag has broken anything. A flag that retraces more than half its pole has already told you the buyers who made the pole are gone, which is why that number sits in the invalidation column and not in a footnote. The bull flag guide works through the volume signature bar by bar. The other common mix-up is the pair at the bottom of the table: a cup and handle has a tight drift lower near the rim before it breaks, and a rounding bottom breaks straight off the curve with no handle at all.
Bearish and False-Breakout Patterns
The bearish reversals, the rising wedge, and the two trap patterns. Traps and broadening formations do not carry a standard measured move, so those cells say so instead of inventing a formula.
| Pattern | Shape | Confirmation trigger | Invalidation trigger | Measured target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Head and Shoulders | Three peaks, the middle one highest, the right shoulder failing to reach the head. | A close below the neckline joining the two troughs, with volume expanding on the break. | Price reclaims the right shoulder's high, or the neckline break closes back above the line. | Head-to-neckline distance projected down from the break. |
| Double Top | Two rejections from about the same resistance, the second usually arriving on lighter volume. | A close below the swing low between the two peaks. | A close above the higher of the two peaks. It is now a triple top in progress or just a range. | Peak-to-neckline distance subtracted from the neckline. |
| Rising Wedge | Two up-sloping trendlines converging, lower line steeper, each push covering less ground than the last. | A close below the lower trendline on expanding volume, against the wedge's own slope. | A close back above the upper trendline, or a breakdown candle that gets fully reclaimed. | Widest height of the wedge projected down from the break. |
| Bull Trap | A poke above obvious resistance on weak volume, then a close back inside the range, often leaving an upper wick. | The trap confirms on a close back below the broken level, not while price is still above it. | A second push that closes above the level and holds it on rising volume. That was a real breakout. | No standard measured move. The usual reference is the opposite side of the range the break failed out of. |
| Bear Trap | A poke below obvious support on weak volume that closes back inside the range, often a long lower wick. | A close back above the broken support, ideally with the reclaim candle taking out the trap candle's high. | A follow-through close below the level on expanding volume. The breakdown was real. | No standard measured move. Traders usually reference the top of the range or the prior swing high. |
| Broadening Formation | Two diverging trendlines, higher highs and lower lows at the same time, swings getting wider each leg. | A decisive close beyond the latest swing extreme on clearly expanding volume. Context sets the direction, the shape does not. | Price snaps back inside the formation within a bar or two, which is the false break this pattern is known for. | Widest width projected from the break, and treat it loosely. The false-break rate here is high. |
Read the trap rows twice. They are the only entries here where the confirmation trigger fires against the direction price just moved, and traders lose money on them by treating the poke through the level as the event. The poke is the bait. The full breakdown of both traps covers how to separate a real break from a fake one while it is happening. The wedge rows catch people out for a different reason: a rising wedge is a bearish pattern that looks bullish the whole way up, since price is still making higher highs inside it, and the wedge guide explains why a shrinking range in the direction of the trend is the tell. The broadening formation is the one entry on this page where standing aside is a legitimate answer.
How to Know When a Chart Pattern Is Confirmed
Every confirmation trigger in both tables has the same shape, and it is worth stating once rather than thirteen times. A pattern confirms when price closes through the line the pattern is defined by, with volume expanding on that candle. A wick through the line is not confirmation. Touching the line is not confirmation. Price sitting above the line intrabar with four minutes left in the candle is not confirmation, which is the specific moment most premature entries happen.
Volume carries most of the weight. StockCharts' ChartSchool makes the same point about flags and pennants, where the pattern is only considered valid when the breakout expands volume after the consolidation contracted it, and Investopedia's entry on continuation patterns treats the same volume behavior as the thing that distinguishes a pause from a top. The practical version: if the breakout candle's volume bar is not visibly taller than the bars inside the pattern, you have a shape and no confirmation.
A confirmed break can still be entered late. Waiting for the retest, meaning price coming back to the broken line and holding it, gives you a tighter stop and a worse fill, and it misses the setups that never look back. Both are defensible. What is not defensible is entering before the close and then calling the pattern confirmed after the fact because the trade happened to work.
Reading the Invalidation Column
The invalidation column is not a stop-loss price. It is the event that means the pattern no longer exists, and your stop goes a little beyond it so that normal noise around the level does not take you out of a pattern that is still intact. On a double top or double bottom that distinction is the whole trade: the pattern dies when price closes back through the neckline, so a stop parked exactly at the neckline is inside the noise band and a stop a few ticks past the swing that formed it is not. ChartSchool's reference on the double top reversal makes the same case for waiting on the neckline close rather than the second rejection.
Two honest limits on this column. Patterns invalidate far more often on thin, low-volume names, where a few thousand shares can push price through a trendline that nothing was actually defending, so the confirmation and invalidation triggers both fire on noise. And in a choppy range every pattern on this page produces false triggers at a rate that makes the measured targets meaningless, because the range boundary sits closer than the projection does. The complete chart patterns guide goes into the context filters in more depth, and the ascending triangle guide shows what the compression looks like when it is real.
Where AI Fits
Worth being precise here, because the obvious assumption is wrong. SnapPChart's grader does not label a chart by pattern name. There is no field in it that outputs "this is a bull flag" or "this is a head and shoulders," and it will not say those words back to you.
What it reads is the set of ingredients the names are shorthand for. Trend direction and where price sits inside that trend. Swing highs and swing lows, and whether the most recent move was a break of structure or the first change of character against it. How volume behaved across the recent candles, green versus red. Where price is relative to the EMAs and VWAP. The support and resistance levels visible on the chart, as ranges rather than single ticks. Those are the same inputs every row of this cheat sheet is assembled from, which is the useful part: a genuine bull flag with a real volume signature and intact structure tends to grade well even though the label is never spoken, and a shape that looks like a bull flag with flat volume and a broken higher low tends not to. If you want the fuller version of how that read is produced from a screenshot, the AI trading guide covers the pipeline.
Printing This Reference
There is no PDF and no email gate. Print the page from your browser instead, Ctrl+P on Windows or Cmd+P on a Mac, and a print stylesheet on this page drops the navigation, the sidebar, and the CTA buttons so what lands on paper is the shape grid and both tables. Save as PDF from the same dialog if you want a file. Landscape orientation is worth setting, because five columns of a table do not enjoy portrait.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a printable chart patterns cheat sheet PDF?
There is no PDF to download, and that is deliberate. This page is the reference, and printing it from your browser (Ctrl+P on Windows, Cmd+P on a Mac) gives you both tables and the shape grid on paper with the site navigation, the sidebar, and the CTA buttons stripped out by a print stylesheet. A hosted PDF would be a stale copy the moment a row changes, and it would sit behind an email form on most sites. The live page updates, prints, and costs you nothing.
Which chart patterns are the most reliable for day trading?
Reliability tracks the confirmation column more than the pattern name. Across the commonly quoted studies, patterns filtered for volume confirmation and sensible context land in the 55% to 65% win-rate range, and the same pattern taken without volume confirmation performs materially worse. On intraday charts the continuation family shows up most often, so bull flags and ascending triangles get the most reps. The broadening formation sits at the other end: the shape is easy to spot and genuinely hard to trade, because the widening range means stops sit further away and the edges overshoot before snapping back.
What is the difference between a chart pattern and a candlestick pattern?
Scale, and it changes what a cheat sheet can do for you. A chart pattern is multi-bar structure, often dozens of candles, so the shape itself carries information about who has been winning the fight over a level. A candlestick pattern is one to three candles, which is too small a sample for the shape alone to mean much. A hammer at support after a real down-move and the identical hammer sitting mid-range are the same drawing and completely different trades. That is why a shape-first table works for chart patterns and misleads for candles.
Does the measured-move target actually get hit?
Often enough to be worth measuring, not often enough to plan on. The measured move is a projection from the pattern's own geometry, not a forecast, and it says nothing about what sits between current price and that level. Its real job is as a filter before entry: measure the target, measure the distance to your invalidation level, and if the ratio between them does not clear your minimum, the setup fails on arithmetic before you ever have to judge the pattern. Plenty of traders take partial profit at the first structural level and let the rest run toward the measured target.
Can AI tell me which chart pattern is on my screenshot?
Not by name. SnapPChart's grader does not have a pattern-classification output, so it will not answer with the words "bull flag" or "head and shoulders." What it does read is the set of ingredients those names are shorthand for: trend direction and swing structure, whether the last move was a break of structure or a change of character, how volume behaved across the recent candles, where price sits relative to the EMAs and VWAP, and the support and resistance levels on the chart. It grades the setup A+ to F from those, so a clean pattern with the right volume signature tends to score well without the label ever being spoken.
This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The confirmation triggers, invalidation triggers, and measured-move rules here are the conventional definitions of each pattern rather than trade recommendations, and the win-rate range quoted in the FAQ is the commonly cited figure for volume-confirmed patterns rather than a result we measured. No chart pattern works every time, and past pattern behavior does not guarantee future results. Day trading carries a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor. AI analysis evaluates chart structure, levels, and visible indicator behavior on a single uploaded screenshot; it does not classify patterns by name, does not scan the market, and does not guarantee trade outcomes. Always do your own research and never trade with money you cannot afford to lose.
- Stock Chart Patterns: The Complete Guide
- Bull Flag Pattern
- Head and Shoulders Pattern
- Double Top and Double Bottom
- Cup and Handle Pattern
- Ascending Triangle Pattern
- Rising and Falling Wedge Patterns
- Bull Trap and Bear Trap
- Rounding Bottom (Saucer)
- Broadening Formation (Megaphone)
- Candlestick Patterns: The Complete Guide
Writes about AI-assisted day trading, technical analysis, and the systems traders actually use to stay disciplined.
The cheat sheet gives you the rule. It can't tell you the setup in front of you is clean
This page is a lookup table, so it answers the same way every time no matter what your chart actually looks like. Upload the screenshot and SnapPChart grades that specific setup A+ to F with an entry, a stop, and the case against the trade.