Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns. Thomas N. Bulkowski

20% after the breakout. My thinking is that if a chart pattern shows large post‐breakout moves, then it should be easier to make money trading them. Conversely, a pattern that has lots of small moves may be difficult to trade profitably.

      Occurrence. Only in bull markets do the majority (55%) of chart pattern types see price rise more than 20%. The worst performance (28%) comes from chart pattern types with downward breakouts in bull markets. That poor performance makes intuitive sense because the market trend is upward but the breakout is downward. It's like swimming against the current, so you'd expect the swimmer to struggle.

      Notice that downward breakouts in bear markets place second (49%). It's another indication that trading with the trend (upward breakouts in bull markets and downward breakouts in bear markets) leads to better performance.

Table 1.8 Trend Change

	Bull Market, Up Breakout	Bear Market, Up Breakout
Occurrence	55%	46%
	Bull Market, Down Breakout	Bear Market, Down Breakout
Occurrence	28%	49%

Table 1.9 Single Busted Patterns (S) versus Proxy (P)

	Bull Market, Up Breakout	Bear Market, Up Breakout
Winner	Single bust (97%)	Single bust (75%)
Performance	–22% S, –15% P	–24% S, –22% P
Single bust occurrence	53%	76%
	Bull Market, Down Breakout	Bear Market, Down Breakout
Winner	Single bust (94%)	Single bust (79%)
Performance	53% S, 41% P	40% S, 28% P
Single bust occurrence	70%	63%

Table 1.9: Single busted patterns versus proxy. The final table in this chapter shows how well busted patterns perform against non‐busted ones.

      Winner. Single busted patterns outperform their non‐busted counterparts a good portion of the time. That's especially true for chart patterns in bull markets. They win more than 90% of the contests. Bear markets also win contests, but at a more sedate pace.

      Performance. I compared the performance of single busted patterns with their proxy (P), the non‐busted pattern. In most cases, the performance difference is quite wide.

      For example, in bear markets after downward breakouts, single busted patterns with downward breakouts saw price rise an average of 40% above the top of the chart pattern. The non‐busted patterns saw price climb just 28%, on average.

      Occurrence. This line tells how often a single busted pattern happens (versus double or more than two busts). The higher the number, the easier it'll be to trade a busted pattern that wins big. That means you are more likely to trade a single busted pattern than a pattern that double or triple+ busts.

      Bull markets with upward breakouts show fewer single busts (53%) than the others. I think that's because when the pattern busts, price will be heading lower and that's going against the bullish current. It invites a double bust.

      The chapters that follow look at individual chart patterns. I use statistics to help discover how they behave, and I share my findings with you.

2 AB=CD^®, Bearish

      RESULTS SNAPSHOT

      Appearance: A three‐leg zigzag pattern with two turns located by Fibonacci ratios.

       Downward Moves

	Bull Market	Bear Market
Performance rank	5 (worst) out of 5	3 out of 5
Breakeven failure rate	26.3%	10.2%
Average drop	–12.7%	–21.6%
Volume trend	Downward	Downward
Point D reversal rate	32%	38%
How many reach point D?	95%	98%
See also	Bearish bat, bearish butterfly, bearish crab, bearish Gartley, measured move up

      You'll need a computer to find this pattern unless you're incredibly fast with a calculator and have lots of time to waste searching for the thing. If you have access to a computer with pattern recognition software, then this pattern is as plentiful as hair on a gorilla. If your software is better than mine or you have special sauce that you can add to the ingredients, then your pattern may behave differently than the ones I studied.

      I measured performance of Fibonacci‐based patterns differently than I do other chart pattern types. That's because we're looking for a reversal at the end of the pattern and not an up or down breakout. Therefore, the layout of this chapter is different from most other chapters in this book.

The bearish AB=CD performs in two ways. First, if you know the first three turns (ABC), then you can anticipate at what price the last turn (D) will appear. This works well, with price reaching D nearly all of the time (95% of the time or more). Second, once price reaches D, it's supposed to turn lower. My tests show this doesn't work well (only 32% to 38% of the time). As I mentioned, this could be a flaw with the model I used. Your software may perform differently.

      Let's run through the rest of the Results Snapshot for the bull market (you can compare the results with the bear market). I measured the drop from the peak at turn D (the last in the pattern) to the ultimate low. Of the five bearish Fibonacci‐based patterns I studied, this one performs worst in the bull market when price drops just 12.7%. The breakeven failure rate is 26.3%, which is high. That means price fails to drop more than 5% over a quarter of the time. Volume trends downward, but it's close to random.

      Let's