A bull flag is a pause in an uptrend: after a sharp upward leg (the pole), price drifts down or sideways in a tight channel (the flag) on declining volume. The pattern resolves when price breaks the flag's upper boundary — the market catching its breath before continuing, not changing its mind.
- 1Pole: impulsive leg up
- 2Flag: tight counter-drift on falling volume
- 3Break of the upper boundary
What 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 leg of at least 2.0× ATR within 10 bars.
- ▪A flag — counter-drift contained in a channel retracing less than 50% of the pole.
- ▪Volume contraction through the flag versus the pole.
Confluences — weighted, not required
- ▫Flag drifts against the trend rather than sideways-neutral.
- ▫Higher-timeframe trend alignment.
- ▫Breakout on expanding volume.
- ▫Flag duration between 5 and 20 bars — flags that overstay become ranges.
Trading it
- 1Where you are wrongThe thesis dies below the flag's low. That is the stop — structure, not a pip count. If that stop makes the position too large for your risk cap, the answer is smaller size or no trade, never a tighter fantasy stop.
- 2EntryThe classic trigger is the break of the flag's upper boundary. The patient variant is the retest of the broken boundary: fewer trades, and the scoreboard below is where that trade-off gets settled rather than argued about.
- 3ObjectiveProject the pole's height from the breakout point. If the measured move offers under about 1.5R, the pattern may be perfectly valid and the trade still not worth taking — valid and worth it are different questions, and the grade knows the difference.
Worked example — real numbers
pole height 4.20 projected from the breakout at 130.20. 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
Bull Flag vs Pennant
Same pause, different shape: flags drift inside a parallel channel, pennants converge into a small triangle. Behaviourally they are near-identical, which is exactly why the engine tracks them separately — if the resolution rates turn out to differ, that is worth knowing, and if they do not, that is worth knowing too.
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 bull flag bullish?
- Yes — it is a continuation pattern, so it implies the prior uptrend resumes. That is the implication, not a guarantee: a flag is a shape plus a context, and the same shape in an extended trend or against a higher-timeframe downtrend is a materially worse trade.
- How long should the flag last?
- Roughly 5 to 20 bars on the timeframe you are trading. Shorter and there has not been enough pause to reset momentum; longer and the flag has become a range, which is a different formation with different behaviour.
- What is the success rate of a bull flag?
- ORIN publishes resolution rates by grade, market and timeframe rather than a single number, because a single number hides the context that decides the outcome. The scoreboard on this page is currently collecting data — no figure is published until the sample clears 500 per cell.
- Do bull flags work on crypto?
- The structural logic travels, but 24/7 markets have no session close to anchor higher-timeframe candles, and weekend liquidity is thinner. The scoreboard splits crypto out for exactly this reason instead of blending it into an average.
- What's the difference between a bull flag and a pennant?
- The flag drifts inside a parallel channel; the pennant converges into a triangle. Both are pauses after an impulsive leg and both are traded the same way — the distinction matters for detection consistency more than for execution.
- What invalidates a bull flag?
- A close below the flag's low. That level is where the pause stops being a pause and becomes a reversal, which is why it is the stop and why it is chosen before the target rather than after.
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