Chart Patterns
Rising / Falling Wedge
Two trendlines sloping the same direction and squeezing together, a rising wedge in an uptrend warns of exhaustion to the downside, a falling wedge in a downtrend warns of exhaustion to the upside.
Fit both lines, watch the validator
Drag the gold handle to fit the top boundary and the blue handle to fit the bottom boundary. The badge below recomputes live off the actual slope of each line: both lines have to slope the same direction and the gap between them has to be narrowing, or the tool tells you exactly why what you drew is a channel or a triangle instead. Once you have a genuine wedge fit, call which way the breakout goes before the real bars print.
Drag the gold circle (top line) and the blue circle (bottom line) on the right edge of the pattern
Select a wedge type and drag the handles to begin.
How it works
- Both boundaries have to slope the same direction. That is the one trait that separates a wedge from every other converging shape. A channel has two parallel lines. A triangle has one flat line and one sloped line. A wedge has two sloped lines, both leaning the same way, closing in on each other.
- The lines also have to actually converge. Same direction alone is not enough. If the gap between the lines is not shrinking as you move right, the slopes are just carrying the whole shape sideways, which the validator treats as a channel, not a wedge.
- Rising wedges lean bearish, falling wedges lean bullish. A rising wedge usually forms during an uptrend, with the lower line climbing faster than the upper one, and typically resolves down. A falling wedge forms during a downtrend, with the upper line falling faster than the lower one, and typically resolves up. Both are read as exhaustion patterns, the move is running out of room before it runs out of time.
- Time to apex is a real countdown, not a suggestion. It is the bar count where your two lines, extended forward at their current slopes, would actually meet. The tighter and steeper your fit, the sooner that number gets small, and price usually breaks one way or the other well before the lines ever really touch.
Where this breaks
The "usual" breakout direction is a tendency, not a rule
A rising wedge does not automatically break down and a falling wedge does not automatically break up. The convergence just says the range is compressing, it says nothing about which side gives way first. Run the breakout call enough times against a fresh wedge and a real share of the calls in the textbook direction still lose, especially when the wedge forms inside a strong trend that simply is not done yet. A wedge fit from a wide, loose channel is also the easiest one to get wrong, because two lines can technically satisfy the same-direction and converging tests while representing a shape so shallow that calling its apex bar count means almost nothing about when or where price actually decides to move.