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Chart Pattern Cheat Sheet
"Grab your own chart pattern cheat sheet and learn how to master your trading setups quickly. You will discover key reversal and continuation patterns to add to your trading arsenal."
Wikilix Team
Educational Content Team
Can you picture viewing a chart and, without hesitation, knowing whether the price would go up, down, or sideways? This is the ability of a chart pattern cheat sheet—a quick reference visual tool that removes the uncertainty in charting. Stay with me, and I will teach you how to quickly identify, act decisively, and hone your instincts without overestimating everything.
A cheat sheet is a small reference aid showing the most important chart patterns—triangles, flags, head-and-shoulders, along with quick visual cues and notes on how each pattern usually plays out. A cheat sheet is the hack you use for on-the-spot, real-time decision-making for more intelligent trader decisions.
A cheat sheet offers a dedicated advantage to traders by providing:
• Speed: You quickly recognise trends, reversals, and consolidation patterns.
• Clarity: You are saved from analysis paralysis with clear visuals and short notes.
• Confidence: You are decisive when recognising your patterns.
• Efficiency: Less time analysing and more time trading.
Continuation patterns indicate the current trend is more likely to persist with a short-term pause. Typical examples are flags, pennants, and rectangles; they convey, "it may be prudent to pause, but expect more of this trend".
Reversal patterns warn that trends are exhausted and their potential reversals are imminent. Classic examples would be head-and-shoulders, double tops/bottoms, and cup-and-handle.
These patterns include symmetrical triangles and wedges; they do not express bullish or bearish views, but indicate something significant is about to happen, although it won't reveal which direction until it breaks out.
Keep your cheat sheet right next to you—with either a printed copy or pinned near your trading platform. When observing price action forming on a chart, compare what you are seeing to the visuals on your cheat sheet and quickly recognise your setups. Confirm what you see with indicators like volume, RSI, stochastic, or moving averages.
After you sufficiently confirm the pattern you are seeing, use the cheat sheet to plan your entry point, target, and stop loss point before actually making a trade. In time, you will see improved consistency as your trades reveal improvement through your "charting eye".
Pattern Type | Visual Tip | What It Signals |
Flag / Pennant | Small, tight triangle or rectangle after a sharp move | Short pause before trend continuation |
Head & Shoulders | Three peaks: the middle is highest | Often signals a trend reversal |
Double Top/Bottom | Two highs or lows at nearly the same level | Indicates potential turning points |
Cup & Handle | Rounded bottom followed by short pullback | Bullish continuation |
Triangle / Wedge | Converging or sloping trendlines | Can signal continuation or reversal depending on context |
Consider you have identified a head-and-shoulders pattern at the end of an uptrend. You are ready to short the stock slightly below the neckline and place a stop-loss slightly above the right shoulder.
Alternatively, consider that price breaks out, rests, and then makes a brief flag. You waited patiently, then went long on price, breaking above the top of the flag while on good volume. You then properly placed your profit target based on the flagpole's height.
The techniques above show how the cheat sheet provides trading rules derived from chart patterns.
• Over-use of the cheat sheet: remember it is to assist your decisions and not the decision!
• Confirmation areas: Make sure you are on the right track by watching volume, breakouts, and retests of supports and/or resistance levels.
• Chart borders and spaces: sometimes, patterns can be vague, arbitrary or poorly defined, which drastically decreases the odds of success.
• Trading impulsively: always allow yourself the chance for confirmation before opening any trade.
Level Up: Create Your Own Customised Cheat Sheet!
Every trader is unique. The cheat sheet can be your cheat sheet by:
• Adding a pattern you see often (inside bars or channels).
• Highlight your favourite beside the ones that fit your strategy.
• Open your notebook to document success rates and noted false breakout traps.
When you're able to live under your own cheat sheet, you will use it far more strategically, and it will evolve with your trading goals.
A cheat sheet with chart patterns is more than a quick reference guide. It is a companion to planning your trades. It will help you identify structured and recognisable price movements, enabling you to make actionable representations from them.
Understanding and identifying continuation, reversal, and neutral patterns will make it easier to distil things down to a structured and disciplined trading plan.
Keep your cheat sheet close, practice identifying live setups, and, whenever possible, confirm the potential trade with supporting indicators. Over time, and with hundreds of trades, your instincts will sharpen. You will trade in far more precision and less guesswork!
In fast-moving markets, your visual guide could be the world of difference between pulling the trigger and standing still!
Keep building your knowledge with our structured learning path. Each section builds upon the previous one.
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9 min
Reading time
Beginner
Difficulty
