Continuation patterns and gaps
A pause inside a move, a hole in the chart, and a break that did not last.
Read the rising and falling three methods and the mat hold as a move pausing inside its own range, and say exactly which close would end that description. Recognise a gap — a window — and know honestly where it can and cannot form on gold and FX: at the weekly open and the daily break, almost never between two weekday hours. Read the tasuki gap, the hikkake and the three line strike as records, and check which convention a source uses before trusting a name.
5 chapters · 6 quiz questions · 13 terms · included with a plan
Otus, on this module
Half of this vocabulary was written for markets that went home every evening. Gold does not. So before learning what a window "means", learn when your own chart can even print one — and notice how much of the candlestick literature quietly assumes a closing bell you do not have.
The chapters
Each module ends with you doing what it taught — a written answer Otus reads, and a quiz.
- 01 · Read
A pause inside a move
Rising and falling three methods, the mat hold — and what "contained" has to mean.
- 02 · Read
Gaps on a market that never closes
Windows, tasuki gaps and two black gapping — and where your chart can actually print one.
- 03 · Read
Traps, strikes and the long tail
The hikkake, the three line strike, and names you will read about more than you will see.
- 04 · Watch
Watch: Rare Candlestick Patterns Nobody Explains Properly
A full course. The step ticks itself when it reaches the end.
- 05 · Write
In your own words
A few sentences. Otus reads them.
- 06 · Quiz
Six questions
A wrong answer still pays. It costs the combo, not the XP.
13 terms this module defines
The same definitions Otus uses in the lessons. All of them are in the trading glossary.
- Continuation pattern
- A shape read as a move pausing and resuming: a counter-move that stayed within limits. It describes containment, and a close beyond the limit ends the description.
- Rising three methods
- A long rising bar, a few small bars inside its range, then a rising bar that closes above the first bar's high. Falling three methods is the mirror.
- Mat hold
- The three-methods skeleton with a gap after the first bar and a pullback that holds higher in its range. Records a counter-move that gave back less.
- Gap
- Empty space between two bars: the second bar's range sits entirely beyond the first, so nothing traded in between. On gold and FX, found mostly at the weekly open.
- Window
- The Japanese name for a gap. A rising window opens upward, a falling window downward; traders watch whether the empty space behaves as a level afterwards.
- Weekly open gap
- The gap between the last price before the weekend and the first price after it. On a market that trades almost around the clock, it is where most true gaps come from.
- Gap fill
- Later bars trading back into a gap's empty space. Fully filled when price reaches its far edge; partly filled when it enters and stops short.
- Tasuki gap
- Two bars gapping in one direction, then an opposite bar that closes inside the gap without filling it. Upside and downside versions mirror each other.
- Two black gapping
- A gap down followed by two falling bars, the second closing lower and neither reaching back into the gap. Records a gap met with more selling instead of a fill.
- Inside bar
- A bar whose whole range, wicks included, sits within the previous bar's range. A period that went nowhere the one before it had not already been.
- Hikkake
- An inside bar, a close beyond one side of it, then within a few bars a close beyond the other side. Records a break that did not last.
- Three line strike
- Three bars in one direction, then one long bar the other way that closes beyond the start of the first. Sources disagree which version is called bullish.
- Breakaway
- Five bars: a long bar, a gap, smaller bars extending the move, then a long opposite bar closing back inside the gap. Rare, and rarer still on markets that seldom gap.
Finishing it pays 150 XP and 3 keys on the game board, on top of what each chapter earns. XP measures what you learned — never what you earned. How levels work.
Education only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything; the school teaches reading charts, never predictions.
Start with lesson one.
The first modules, Otus as your tutor and the game board are free. No card needed.