Recognizing the Bull Flag Pattern 2023: Explained to Traders

Again, you must be already familiar when it comes to plotting support and resistance. That’s why I suggest taking your profits below the next area of resistance you’ve plotted on the chart. At this point, you should be a pro at plotting support and resistance.

• We’ve observed its clear entry and exit strategies, and the pattern’s historical tendency to precede significant price movements commands respect from traders.
• The Rising Wedge pattern is known to have a strong bearish potential, which makes it a great trigger for a short trade within this Measured Move pattern.
• To put it simply, a bull flag pattern signals that although there may be a temporary setback, a positive price trend is likely to continue.
• Once you can identify chart patterns, you can easily anticipate where price will go next.
• Notice that the lowest point of the 2nd wave corrects to the 61.8% Fibonacci Retracement level of the First Leg.
• The second step in spotting the bull flag pattern is monitoring the shape of the correction.

Ideally, we want to see the retracement to stay above the 32.8% Fibonacci retracement. A valid price structure happens when we have a higher low at pivot C and a higher high at pivot D. Measured moves can be found in all markets and in all-time intervals. Buying the pullback entails entering long positions when the price retracts and tests the preceding highs.

I have missed out big time trading opportunities for not knowing it earlier. Having observed the basic outline of a bull flag, we can appreciate its significance in the rhythm of market movements. Now let’s compare how these patterns stack up against rectangular bull flag formations.

Remember, Patterns Don’t Always Work

In addition, hypothetical trading does not involve financial risk, and no hypothetical trading record can completely account for the impact of financial risk of actual trading. Futures and forex trading contains substantial risk and is not for every investor. An investor could potentially lose all or more than the initial investment.

• The target for a bull flag is derived by measuring the length of the flag pole and projecting it from the breakout point.
• A bull flag in crypto has the exact same criteria as in stocks.
• We also have a great tutorial on the most reliable bullish patterns.
• The consolidation happens over three days and the trading range narrows along the way.
• If a bull flag is accurate, it will signal the continuation of an existing bull trend and the price will rise once the pattern completes.

The reliability of the bull flag pattern depends on the success of the checklist mentioned above. When all components of the bull flag are identified and present within the chart, the bull flag pattern is considered to be a formidable pattern to trade. A bull flag is negated when a stock closes a trading day below the lower trendline of the flag pattern, or if the flag falls more than 50% down the length of the pole.

Bullish candle formations are traditionally white or unfilled. Bullish candle formations signify the closing price was higher than the opening price. As always, I recommend you paper trade this pattern for a while before you trade with a live account. I want you to promise me that you will do your bull flag formation work by tweaking, backtesting, and demo trading these strategies consistently first before risking your hard-earned money. Finally, I suggest using a tight trailing stop loss such as the 20-period moving average. Now since this is a trend reversal strategy, you’d want to look for downtrends.

Types of Flag Patterns

The confirmation of the Bullish Flag pattern happens with the upside breakout, and we would prepare for a long position. If you see the price hitting a level, and then bouncing contrary to the trend, then the trend might be getting exhausted. On the other hand, if you see the price breaking a level with increasing momentum, then this might mean that the trend is gaining strength. Notice that both lengths are applied starting from the breakout level of the pattern. Pay attention to how the inside candles formed during the flag.

You want to see a strong move upward in prior days to form the “pole” of the flag. Then you want a tight consolidation where the price begins to move downward or countertrend on lower volume. Lastly, when the volume returns, you’ll buy the break of the previous candle’s high. The optimal place to buy a bull flag breakout is once the trend begins to shift once again in the desired direction. In this 30-minute chart example, you can see that the first candle to make a new high inside the bull flag becomes the breakout candle.

It may be tempting to try and guess the bottom of the price channel, and time the last bottom before the next impulsive jump. However, the market may simply continue the flag price channel for one more leg, or many more than one. This is why traders wait for the breakout in the flag pattern, rather than jumping in and making trades based on hope. The breakout is where you will take your trade when using the flag pattern.

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It is a set it and forget type of trade setup that doesn’t require much in terms of trade management when the prescribed take profit rules are followed. Now, let’s see how you can effectively trade with the measured move pattern strategy and how to make profits from basically using no technical indicator. You won’t be able to call the forex measured move until later in the actual development of the pattern. But after you have got the first leg to the upside we should expect the same thing duplicated on the second leg, so trading with the measured move pattern should be an easy job.

Step#3 Buy the bullish measured move at the market price when we break above Pivot point B.

Price action analysis can help traders select optimal trade candidates as well as assist in setting entry and exit points on the chart. Many traders are able to select their entry points without much issue but it is usually the management of exits that causes traders the most amount of grief. The bullish measured move basically is a trend continuation pattern suitable to be traded on all time frames. Trading the measured move will get you in sync with the market rhythm and you’ll no longer be trading based on random numbers. The measured move pattern is an old school chart pattern that states that the market has the tendency to move in a similar price structure to how it moved recently.

If you would like to learn more about chart patterns and trading strategies, please check out our free educational resources here at TradingSim. A bull flag fails or is invalidated once it breaks the low of the breakout candle. The bear flag is a countertrend consolidation in a downtrend. Generally speaking, a bull flag pattern is very reliable depending on the context of the stock you are trading. The later the run and the more consolidations you have, the less likely a bull flag is to perform well. Then, during the flag formation, we get the pullback on lower volume and tighter range red candles.

If the pattern is bearish, then you apply the target downwards. We typically want to channel the price action of the 2nd wave retracement and wait for an upside breakout from the channel for confirmation to enter a long trade. A simple trend line or the linear regression channel can both be excellent tools for this application.