A bear flag is a pause in a downtrend. After an impulsive leg down (the pole), price drifts up or sideways in a tight channel on declining volume, then resolves lower when the channel breaks. It is the market resting between sellers, not reversing.
- 1Pole: impulsive leg down
- 2Break of the lower boundary
No instance passed the hard criteria in the last 7 days. This one is 8 days old and is dated as such rather than re-presented as current.
Run this bear flag pattern read yourselfWhat the engine actually checks
“Looks like one” is not a rule. Detection requires every hard criterion and scores the confluences — fail a hard criterion and it is not this setup, it is a hope with a nickname.
Hard criteria — all required
- ▪A pole — an impulsive decline of at least 2.0× ATR within 10 bars.
- ▪A flag — upward counter-drift retracing less than 50% of the pole.
- ▪Volume contraction through the flag versus the pole.
Confluences — weighted, not required
- ▫Higher-timeframe trend alignment to the downside.
- ▫Breakdown on expanding volume.
- ▫Flag duration between 5 and 20 bars.
Trading it
- 1Where you are wrongThe thesis dies above the flag's high. Bear flags in equities carry an asymmetry worth naming: upside gaps happen more often than downside ones, so a stop above the flag is more likely to be jumped than its mirror image in a bull flag.
- 2EntryThe break of the flag's lower boundary is the trigger; the retest of that boundary from beneath is the patient variant. In a market that has been falling for a while, the retest often does not come — which is itself the trade-off.
- 3ObjectiveProject the pole height downward from the breakdown. Downside measured moves complete faster than upside ones on average because fear moves quicker than greed, but "faster" is not "more often" and the scoreboard is where that gets settled.
Worked example — real numbers
pole height 10.40 projected down from the breakdown at 246.00. A valid formation offering under about 1.5R is still a valid formation and still not worth taking — valid and worth it are different questions.
Size this trade against your account →The scoreboard
Resolution by grade, market and timeframe — because a single blended number would let strong contexts carry weak ones, which is how every invented “success rate” in this category is constructed.
| Grade | Market | Timeframe | Resolution | Sample |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Equities | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| A | Equities | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| A | Crypto | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| A | Crypto | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| A | FX | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| A | FX | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| B | Equities | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| B | Equities | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| B | Crypto | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| B | Crypto | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| B | FX | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| B | FX | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| C | Equities | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| C | Equities | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| C | Crypto | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| C | Crypto | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| C | FX | 1H–4H | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
| C | FX | 1D | collecting | no resolved sample yet |
Where this traps people
Drop your chart and the engine checks it against the same hard criteria listed above — the ones it uses on every scan. First read is free and needs no account.
Questions traders actually ask
- Is a bear flag bearish?
- Yes — it implies the prior downtrend continues after the pause. The implication holds best early in a trend; the same shape after several completed legs down is frequently the market bottoming rather than resting.
- How is a bear flag different from a falling wedge?
- A bear flag drifts upward against a downtrend and resolves lower. A falling wedge converges downward and typically resolves higher. They point opposite ways, which is why confusing them is one of the more costly misreads available.
- Do bear flags work in crypto?
- They form constantly, and thin weekend books make the counter-drift look tidier than the participation justifies. The scoreboard splits crypto out rather than averaging it with equities, because the liquidity regimes are not comparable.
- Where exactly does the stop go?
- Above the flag's high. Not above a round number, not a fixed percentage — the structural level where the drift stops being a pause. Any other placement is a preference dressed as a rule.
- Can a bear flag appear in an uptrend?
- The shape can, and it usually means something different there: a sharp pullback inside a larger uptrend, which frequently resolves upward instead. Higher-timeframe alignment is scored as a confluence precisely because of this.
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