Descending Triangle
A flat lower boundary with a falling upper boundary, so the range narrows from above. It completes when price closes below the flat support line.
The bearish counterpart: sellers accepting progressively lower prices while a standing bid holds one level. Conventionally read as a continuation of a downtrend, though it appears in ranges as often as in trends, and the prior-trend requirement in the detector exists to separate the two.
What a descending triangle has actually done
Every completed occurrence we hold, replayed forward one trade at a time until it reached its target, its stop, or its deadline — after a 0.20% round-trip trading cost.
| Timeframe | Occurrences | Reached target | Baseline | Edge | Median R |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1H · crypto | 40 | 10.0% | 31.7% | -21.7pp | -1.05 |
Baseline is the chance of touching this pattern’s target before its stop with no drift at all — the odds the geometry alone implies. A rate at or below it means the shape added nothing. Edge is the difference between the two. Median R is what the trades returned per unit of risk, across every occurrence including losses, after costs — it can be negative for a pattern that reaches its target more often than chance. This is a record of what followed, not a forecast.