Rising wedge pattern and falling wedge

Wedge or triangle, the difference is the slope

In a symmetrical triangle, one line rises and the other falls: they converge by heading towards each other.

In a wedge, both lines lean the same way, and they still converge because one leans harder than the other. That shared tilt is what gives the pattern its name and what carries the information. Elliott wave theory knows this shape as a diagonal and gives it a place in the count.

The falling wedge has both lines falling, the top faster than the floor. The market is dropping, but dropping less and less. Bullish reading.

The rising wedge is its mirror, both lines rising, the floor faster than the top. The market climbs while running out of breath. Bearish reading.

The practical difference from a triangle sits there: a symmetrical triangle has no lean to read, a wedge has one. How much that lean is worth is a matter of counting, and the two wedges do not score the same.

Rising wedge pattern: definition and criteria

A rising wedge is a price move contained between two trendlines that both slope up and converge, the lower line steeper than the upper one. Thomas Bulkowski, whose statistics are used throughout this lesson, publishes identification guidelines for it, and each of them can be checked on the chart before any money is involved.

1. Two rising lines that converge. Draw one line through the swing highs and one through the swing lows. Both must slope up, and the lower one must be the steeper, otherwise they never meet. If the upper line is flat, the shape is an ascending triangle, not a wedge.

2. Five touches. Price has to touch the lines at least five times, three on one and two on the other, each touch being a distinct swing high or swing low. With fewer, the lines are an opinion.

3. Three weeks or more. On the daily charts his statistics come from, a rising wedge lasts at least three weeks. A shorter one is classed as a pennant, covered further down.

4. A close outside the line. The pattern is confirmed when a candle closes outside one of the two lines. A wick through the lower line is not a breakout, and until that close a rising wedge is only an advance that is narrowing.

Volume is a description rather than a test: in his sample it trends downward until the breakout in 79% of rising wedges, which leaves one wedge in five forming on flat or rising volume.

The trend that leads into the pattern is not part of the definition, it can point either way. A rising wedge that ends a long advance and breaks down is a reversal. One that interrupts a decline and breaks down is a continuation. The checks are the same in both cases.

How reliable is a rising wedge? The measured numbers

Bulkowski's figures for the rising wedge come from more than 1,400 perfect trades, his term, in bull markets, with statistics last updated in August 2020. They measure the move from the breakout to the ultimate high or low, the extreme reached before price reverses by at least 20%. They are measurements of what price did, not results of trades taken with a stop.

Breakout direction: downward in 60% of cases. The bearish reading is a majority, not a rule: four wedges in ten break through the upper line.

Downward breakouts: weak follow-through. 51% of them fail to fall by 5%, which he counts as a break-even failure. The average decline is 9%. On his performance ranking the rising wedge comes 36th out of 36 for downward breakouts, last.

Upward breakouts: better numbers. 19% break-even failures, an average rise of 38%, rank 32 out of 39. The sample is limited to bull markets, which is worth keeping in mind before reading the gap between the two sides as a property of the pattern.

Return to the breakout price: 72% in both directions, within thirty days. Nearly three breakouts in four come back, which weighs on the choice of entry.

Two limits before these percentages travel. They were measured on stocks, on daily charts. His pages give no equivalent for forex, indices, crypto or intraday timeframes, and we have found no reliable figure for them: treat the numbers as unestablished there. And a break-even failure rate is not a win rate, it only counts the patterns that moved less than 5%. Source: thepatternsite.com, consulted in October 2026.

Rising wedge price target, with a worked example

After a downward breakout, Bulkowski's measure rule puts the target at the lowest low inside the wedge. In his sample, 32% of downward breakouts reached it. He therefore gives a more cautious calculation: take the height of the wedge, from its highest high to its lowest low, multiply it by that 32%, and subtract the result from the breakout price, the point where price crosses the line. After an upward breakout the same calculation uses 63% and adds the result.

The prices below are invented and deliberately round: they show the arithmetic, not a real trade. A stock climbs for seven weeks inside a wedge on its daily chart. The lows touch the lower line at 40.00, 42.50 and 45.00. The highs touch the upper line at 44.00, 45.60 and 47.20. Each low gains 2.50 on the previous one, each high 1.60: both lines rise, the lower one faster, with six touches.

After the third high, price crosses the lower line at 46.90 and the daily candle closes at 46.30. That close is the breakout. Entry at 46.30, short. Stop at 47.30, just above the highest high, because a return above 47.20 means the wedge has not broken down: 1.00 of risk per share.

Full target: 40.00, the lowest low of the wedge, 6.30 below the entry, or 6.3 times the risk. Cautious target: the height is 47.20 minus 40.00, so 7.20; 32% of it is 2.30, subtracted from the 46.90 where price crossed the line, which gives 44.60, or 1.7 times the risk. For scale, the 9% average decline of the sample, applied to 46.30, would end near 42.10, between the two.

Size comes from the stop, never from the target. On a 10,000 dollar account risking 1%, the loss allowed is 100 dollars, so 100 shares, a position worth 4,630 dollars. The position size calculator does the division for any instrument.

The 72% return rate suggests a second plan: instead of selling the close, wait for price to come back up to the breakout price, 46.90 here, and sell there. The stop at 47.30 is then 0.40 away instead of 1.00. What it costs is the 28% of breakouts that do not return within thirty days. And Bulkowski notes that returns to the breakout price hurt performance, so the patient entry selects the weaker moves.

The falling wedge numbers

Study by Thomas Bulkowski across more than 800 perfect trades, quoted as it stands.

Breakout split: 68% upward, therefore 32% downward. That is a clear imbalance, far stronger than the 60/40 of the symmetrical triangle. The pattern genuinely leans.

Performance rank: 31 out of 39 on an upward break, 27 out of 36 on a downward one. Better than the symmetrical triangle, and still in the lower half.

Failure rate: 26% upward, 29% downward. Average move: 38% upward, 14% downward. Price target met: 62% upward, 29% downward.

Return to the line after the break: 62% upward, 74% downward. Three downward breaks out of four come back to touch the line. That is the most constraining number on the list and it should decide your entry.

The target behind that 62% is his measure rule for an upward breakout: the highest high inside the wedge.

Source: thepatternsite.com, consulted in October 2026.

What those numbers impose

Two conclusions follow directly, and both are operational.

One. The direction of the wedge is worth more than the wedge. With 68% of breaks upward on the falling wedge, the pattern has a default orientation. Playing a downward break on a falling wedge means taking the minority side of a pattern that already returns 29% failure and 29% of targets met on that side. It is not forbidden, but you should know it.

Two. An entry on the break is retested more often than not. 62% one way, 74% the other. Waiting for the return to the line takes the same trade at a better price in those cases and misses the breakouts that do not come back. It is the same question as for the triangle and the cup: three different patterns, one same execution choice to measure.

The wedge also shares the triangle's drawing weakness: two lines to place, therefore a judgement. Two touches minimum per line, and if you have to force a point, the pattern does not exist.

Rising wedge or bearish flag: how to tell them apart

A bearish flag is a short pause in a decline. Price drops steeply, the flagpole, then moves for less than three weeks between two parallel lines, a small rectangle that slopes up against the fall or stays flat. The pattern is complete when a candle closes below the lower line. On a chart it can pass for a small rising wedge, since both climb and both are read as bearish. Three checks separate them.

The lines. In a flag they run parallel, or nearly. In a wedge they converge. If the two lines you drew would meet a little further to the right, it is not a flag.

The duration. By Bulkowski's criteria a flag lasts less than three weeks and a wedge at least three. A consolidation that runs longer between parallel lines is a rectangle or a channel.

What comes before. A flag needs its flagpole, a move he describes as unusually steep and lasting several days. A wedge needs nothing of the kind, it can form after any trend. No steep drop just before, no bearish flag.

The pennant is the third look-alike. It has the same flagpole as a flag, but the pause is held between two converging lines, like a small triangle pattern, and it lasts three weeks or less. Parallel lines make a flag, converging lines a pennant, and converging lines that hold for three weeks or more a wedge or a triangle.

The target is not measured the same way. With invented prices: a stock falls from 60.00 to 51.00, a flagpole of 9.00, then drifts up to 54.00 over eight sessions before closing below the lower line of the flag at 52.40. The full projection subtracts the flagpole from the top of the flag: 54.00 minus 9.00, so 45.00. Bulkowski's measure rule is more cautious. It first multiplies the flagpole by 46%, the share of flags that met the target in his sample, which gives 4.14 and a target of 49.86.

His numbers for flags are measured on the short swing that follows the breakout, not to the ultimate low, and they are modest: after a downward breakout, 45% of flags fail to fall by 5% and the average decline is 8%, on a sample he describes as hundreds of trades. For pennants, 54% fail to move 5% in either direction. The full guide to the flag pattern covers the bullish version, volume and stop placement. Source: thepatternsite.com, consulted in October 2026.

Falling wedge or inverse head and shoulders pattern

At the end of a decline, the falling wedge is not the only pattern read as bullish. An inverse head and shoulders pattern is made of three successive lows: a first low, the left shoulder, a lower low, the head, and a third low that stops near the level of the first, the right shoulder. A falling wedge, with its falling lower line, prints lower lows until it breaks. Here the third low holds above the second.

The neckline joins the two rebound highs on either side of the head. The pattern is confirmed when a candle closes above it. When the neckline slopes upward, Bulkowski takes the close above the second of those highs as the confirmation instead.

The target is the height from the low of the head to the neckline directly above it, added to the breakout price. With invented prices: shoulders at 51.50 and 52.00, head at 48.00, rebound highs at 56.20 and 55.20, so a neckline that slopes down and passes 55.70 above the head. The height is 7.70. Price crosses the neckline at 54.90 and the candle closes at 55.10: the target is 54.90 plus 7.70, so 62.60. With an entry at 55.10 and a stop under the right shoulder at 51.90, the risk is 3.20 and the target 7.50 away, 2.3 times the risk.

The measured record is where the two patterns part. In Bulkowski's bull-market statistics, head-and-shoulders bottoms rank 13th out of 39, with 11% break-even failures, an average rise of 45% and a target met in 71% of cases, on 3,197 perfect trades. The falling wedge with an upward breakout ranks 31st, with 26%, 38% and 62%. Same direction, same source, and a failure rate more than twice as high for the wedge.

The full method, volume included, is in the guide to the inverse head and shoulders pattern. Source: thepatternsite.com, consulted in October 2026.

What it gives in your own journal

The most useful measurement here is the direction you take. Tag your wedge trades according to whether you went with the majority direction of the pattern or against it. If the 68 against 32 imbalance shows up for you, you will know what to stop doing.

The second is maximum adverse excursion, for the same reason as on the triangle and the cup: it tells you whether your entry on the break systematically makes you sit through a return to the line. If so, enter on that return, you take the same trade at a better price.

Tradoshi computes that excursion on every imported trade and combines labels in the journal filter.

On a market the published numbers do not cover, the count has to be yours before the first trade. Replay the pattern on history and write down every case, the failures included: in Tradoshi, backtesting is included from the Pro plan, with ten strategies, and unlimited on Premium.

Frequently asked questions

Is a rising wedge bullish or bearish? Bearish by majority: 60% of rising wedges break downward in Bulkowski's sample. The other 40% break upward, so the name of the pattern is not a signal. The close outside the line is.

Falling wedge, bullish or bearish? Bullish by default, and it is measured: 68% of breaks go upward.

What is the difference from a triangle? In a wedge both lines lean the same way. In a symmetrical triangle they lean in opposite directions, and in an ascending triangle the upper line is flat.

Should you wait for the break? Yes, a close outside the line. The return to that line then happens in 62% to 74% of cases, depending on the wedge and the direction.

How many touches to draw one? Two per line is the bare minimum to draw a line at all. Bulkowski asks for five in total, three on one line and two on the other.

How long does a wedge take to form? At least three weeks on a daily chart by Bulkowski's criteria. Below that, he classes the same converging shape as a pennant.

What about the broadening formation? It is the opposite, the lines diverge instead of converging. It is a different pattern, with its own statistics.