The descending triangle can be traded very successfully on the short side entering the trade as the stock breaks out of the pattern to the downside. The pattern forms when the two boundary lines that contain the price movement converge to a point. The top line slopes down toward the bottom line which is horizontal.

Descending Triangles Profitable, No Surprise

Most descending triangles would be expected to break down and in fact 57%, break out to the downside making this pattern best when traded on the short side. 45% of these breakouts are profitable and on average the profit per trade is 0.92% over a period of 9 days. A good proportion, 12.1% of these breakouts make a profit of 10% or more. The descending triangle is one of the best chart patterns when it breaks to the downside and applying some filters makes this pattern even more attractive to trade.

Specific Setups to Improve Profitability

A break to the downside works better in a falling market or sector environment. By using filters that require the market to be in a consolidation or a down trend you can improve the results. The sector should also be in a down trend for the best results. Strangely a sector that is in a down trend at the beginning of the pattern produces better results than a sector in a down trend when the breakout occurs.

Breakouts can occur anywhere along the length of the descending triangle pattern. Another key to picking successful short breakouts from descending triangles is to look for a turning point up from the lower boundary that fails to reach the upper boundary and then falls away.

Ensure that the volume is supportive of the breakout, i.e. volume as the stock falls is greater than volume as the stock rises.

Trading Descending Triangles Can Be Profitable

Incorporating these simple changes when selecting descending triangles to trade short, dramatically improves the results. With an average return per trade of 2.55% in 10 days and a hit rate of 48% descending triangles are one of the most profitable patterns to trade on the short side.

Statistics for this article have been provided by Patterns Trader after analyzing over 60,000 chart patterns on the Australian market from 2000 – 2008.