Pennant

A continuation shape in the family of brief pauses. It has two parts by convention: a steep, near vertical move, usually called the pole, and then a small consolidation whose boundaries converge towards a point. Its neighbours are distinguished by geometry rather than by meaning. A flag pauses inside a parallel channel instead of a converging one, and a symmetrical triangle has the same converging shape but is drawn over a longer stretch and without the requirement of a sharp move preceding it.

Identification is by eye and the conventions are loose. The pause is expected to occupy a handful of periods rather than dozens, volume is conventionally described as thinning through it and expanding on the resolution, and the boundaries are drawn across a small number of highs and lows, which means two chartists working the same window will place them differently. The measured objective usually quoted, projecting the length of the pole from the point of resolution, is a convention with no mechanism behind it and no agreed rule for where the pole is deemed to start.

The honest difficulty is the same one that attaches to every named shape: it is labelled after it has resolved. While the bars are forming, the same window is consistent with a pennant, with a small triangle, and with the beginning of a reversal, and the distinction between the first two is a matter of degree rather than of kind. Published tests of reliability disagree with each other largely because each encodes different duration and drawing rules, and the disagreement has not narrowed. The workable reading is that a pennant describes a pause, and a pause is consistent with both continuation and reversal until it ends.