Trend / Momentum
ABCD Measured Move Pattern
Four swing points where the second leg mirrors the length of the first, and D is where that symmetry says the move should end.
Mark the swing, then guess D yourself
The sequence plays forward on its own, marking A, B, and C the moment each swing point actually forms. Once C prints, the auto-play stops so you can drag a line on the chart to where you think D will land, based on eyeballing the AB=CD symmetry yourself. Lock it in, and the mechanically computed zone appears next to your guess so you can see how close you got, then the remaining bars play out to show whether price actually tapped the zone and what it did after.
How it works
- AB and CD have to rhyme. The math takes the price distance of the first leg, A to B, and projects that same distance from C to find D.
- C is a retracement, not a random pullback. This drill only treats a C point as valid when it retraces inside a normal range of the AB leg, roughly 38% to 68% of it, not one exact percentage.
- D is a zone, not a single price. Real markets don't stop on one exact number, so the projection here draws a small band around the calculated target instead of a single line.
- Symmetry is a tendency, not a rule the market has to obey. The whole pattern is a bet that the second leg behaves like the first. Nothing forces that to happen.
- Tapping the zone and reversing there are two different events. Price reaching the projected level is the setup. What happens after that tap, a reversal or a continuation, is a separate question the play-forward step tracks on its own.
Where this breaks
A C point that breaks the symmetry it's supposed to measure
The AB=CD math only holds up when C sits in a reasonable retracement zone of the AB leg. When C barely pulls back at all, or pulls back almost all the way to A, the projected D target stretches into a price zone that has little to do with how the actual move has been behaving. The ratio still computes a number, the arithmetic doesn't care whether the retracement looks reasonable, but that number stops describing anything real about the current move's rhythm once C sits at either extreme. Traders projecting a D target off an extreme C point are often trading a math exercise dressed up as a pattern, not a level the market is actually likely to respect. This drill only treats a C point as valid input when it falls inside a normal retracement range for exactly that reason.