What a gap is, and the four families
A gap is a hole in the price record: the period opens at a level that does not touch the previous period. In between, no trade took place at those prices.
Gaps are born from interruptions in trading, so mainly at the open of a stock session, after an announcement, or on Sunday evening in forex. On a market open around the clock, they are far rarer.
The common gap, also called an area gap, appears in a market with no direction. It signals nothing in particular.
The breakaway gap appears at the start of a move, often on the exit of a pattern or a range. It is the departure.
The continuation gap appears in the middle of a move already under way, and accelerates it.
The exhaustion gap appears at the end of a move, in a last surge. It is often the sign that it is over.
The numbers, and they settle the question
Study by Thomas Bulkowski across more than 1,100 samples. Percentage of gaps closed within a week, in a bull market, quoted as it stands.
Upward gaps: common gap 85%, breakaway gap 1%, continuation gap 8%, exhaustion gap 60%.
Downward gaps: common gap 90%, breakaway gap 1%, continuation gap 15%, exhaustion gap 66%.
The median time to close says the same thing differently. Common gap: 3 to 4 days. Exhaustion gap: 5 to 6 days. Continuation gap: 25 to 45 days. Breakaway gap: 84 to 89 days.
In other words, between a common gap and a breakaway gap the ratio is 85 to 1 over the week, and a few days against nearly three months on timing. These are not two shades of the same phenomenon, they are two different things.
Source: thepatternsite.com, consulted in September 2026. The cases studied cover US stocks.
How to tell which one you are looking at
Everything hinges here, and it is the hard part: the type is read in the context, not in the gap itself. Three questions are enough.
Where is the move? If price was drifting with no direction, you probably have a common gap, therefore something that fills fast. If it is coming out of a range or a pattern, you have a breakaway gap, and it will probably not fill. If it has been climbing for weeks, beware of exhaustion.
Is volume exceptional? A breakaway gap generally comes with volume well above the ordinary. A common gap goes unnoticed.
Does price come straight back? That is the most honest test, and it costs a little patience. A common gap fills within a median three to four days. If nothing comes back after a week, the "common gap" reading is wrong and you should stop waiting.
Beware of retrospective classification: you only know for certain that a gap was a breakaway gap once the move has happened. At the moment you see it, you are making a hypothesis, not an observation.
How to trade it
Playing the fill is only defensible on a common gap, and even then: at 85%, one time in seven it does not come back, and if you got the type wrong you are facing a hole that takes three months to close. So there must be a stop, and it must sit somewhere other than intuition.
Playing the continuation is the other side of the trade, and the numbers support it better than people think: on a breakaway gap, 99% do not fill within the week. Entering in the direction of the gap, with a stop on the far side of the hole, is consistent with what the studies show.
What you must not do is play the fill because "gaps always fill". That is the textbook case of a stock phrase replacing a classification, and it costs the most on exactly the gaps that matter, the breakaway ones.
What it gives in your own journal
The useful measurement is direct: tag the type of gap at the time of the trade, common, breakaway, continuation or exhaustion, then check your win rate by type.
The most frequent outcome of that exercise is not a win rate, it is a discovery about yourself: many traders find they tag almost everything as a "common gap", because that is the type that justifies the trade they wanted to take. That is confirmation bias applied to a classification.
The remedy is simple and takes two lines in a journal: record your label before knowing what happened, and record the session's volume. If your common gaps systematically come with exceptional volume, you are not classifying, you are justifying.
Tradoshi lets you label every trade and filter the journal by label, so the four populations compare directly.
Frequently asked questions
Do all gaps get filled? No. A common gap fills 85% to 90% of the time within a week, a breakaway gap 1%. The sentence "gaps always fill" is false exactly where it costs the most.
How long does it take to fill? Median time: 3 to 4 days for a common gap, 5 to 6 for an exhaustion gap, 25 to 45 for a continuation gap, 84 to 89 for a breakaway gap.
How do I know which type I have? From the context, not from the gap. Position within the move, volume, and how price behaves in the following days.
Are there gaps in forex? Far fewer, since the market is open around the clock. They appear mainly at the Sunday evening reopen, and the figures quoted here cover stocks.
Is any particular volume needed? A breakaway gap generally comes with markedly higher volume. It is the most useful clue for classifying in the moment.
Key takeaways
- A common gap fills 85% of the time within a week, a breakaway gap 1%. The sentence "gaps always fill" is false.
- Median time: 3 to 4 days for a common gap, against 84 to 89 days for a breakaway gap. Not two shades, two different things.
- The type is not read in the gap, it is read in the context: position within the move, volume, behaviour over the following days.
- Playing the fill only makes sense on a common gap, and it still needs a stop, because one time in seven it does not come back.
- In your journal, tag the type BEFORE knowing what follows. If all your gaps are common ones, you are justifying instead of classifying.
Going further
These blog articles dig into this lesson's ideas, one subject per article.