Bear flag
Sharp move down, tight drift up
What it is
A steep decline followed by a shallow, orderly drift upward in a narrow channel, then continuation lower.
What it may suggest
A pause in supply rather than a turn. Buyers are not chasing it back up, they are filling in a gap the sellers left.
Where it fails
The same depth rule as its mirror: once the drift has retraced most of the decline it is not a flag any more, whatever the channel looks like. A bear flag is also the shape many bottoms make on the way to being a bottom, so it is the pattern most often named right up until it stops working.
Also called bear flag pattern, bearish flag.
More chart patterns
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