Chart Patterns
Rectangle / Range Continuation
Price pauses in a horizontal box after a clear prior trend leg, then usually keeps moving the same direction it was already going once it breaks out.
Fit the box, read the score
Every chart below has a prior trend leg on the left, then a consolidation stretch. Drag the gold handles until the box matches where price actually paused. The trend-context readout on the left is fixed, it measures the leg that already happened. The score on the right is entirely about how well your box fits the real highs and lows of the pause. A tight, well-contained box after a real trend is what makes this a continuation rectangle instead of just a random sideways chop.
Drag the top and bottom gold bars over the consolidation to set the rectangle.
Drag the handles onto the consolidation to begin.
How it works
- The score is two separate measurements added together. Containment counts what share of the consolidation bars have their full high-to-low range inside your box, weighted at 55% of the score. Tightness compares the box's height to the size of the prior trend leg, weighted at 25%, because a rectangle that is nearly as wide as the trend that formed it is not really a pause. The remaining 20% comes from the trend context score on the left, which is fixed and not something you can drag into place.
- A weak prior trend fails automatically. If the trend context score is below 35, the setup is flagged as a random range no matter how cleanly the box fits, because there is no established direction for a breakout to continue. A rectangle needs something to be a continuation of.
- Passing needs three things at once. An overall score of 75 or higher, containment of at least 85%, and a trend context score of 35 or higher. Miss any one and the badge stays red.
- The forward play is weighted, not guaranteed. A confirmed rectangle with a strong prior trend gets a higher chance of continuing in that direction when you click play forward, roughly 35% to 85% depending on how strong the trend score actually is. It is a real edge, not a coin flip and not a certainty.
Where this breaks
The box is easy to fit after the fact and hard to trust while it is still forming
This tool lets you drag the box once the whole consolidation is already printed on the chart, which makes containment and tightness look obvious in hindsight. Live, a trader has to guess where the top and bottom of the range will settle while only the first few bars of the pause exist, and an early guess gets redrawn wider or narrower every time a new bar pushes past the current edge. A rectangle that looks tightly contained on bar eight of the pause can still add a bar eleven that pokes a full percent outside either edge, which either resets the whole read or forces a wider box that fails the tightness test against the trend leg that came before it. The pattern only becomes a clean rectangle once it is finished, and by then the easy part of the trade, the breakout itself, has often already happened.