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What Is a Continuation Pattern

A continuation pattern is a pause inside a move — a few small candles going sideways — after which the move goes on in the direction it was already going. This paper shows you a real one drawn from the euro's rise in March 2025, the pause as a landing between two flights of stairs, the pause on the daily chart, the shapes a pause usually takes, and how to count its bars with the crosshair on your platform.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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A pause inside a move

A continuation pattern is a pause inside a move, after which the move goes on the way it was going. The euro against the dollar rose 386 pips from 3 to 5 March 2025 — a pip being the fourth decimal place, the smallest step most people count in. Then it paused: 6, 7 and 10 March closed within 56 pips of each other, inside a band 123 pips tall. On 11 March the rise went on, and by 18 March the price had reached 1.09544. The pause is the pattern; the word continuation is what it is called once the move has carried on.

A landing between two flights

The picture is a staircase. A move is a flight of stairs, and a continuation pattern is the landing between two flights: the price rests, going sideways or drifting a little back, and then the next flight goes on in the same direction as the last. The landing is flat or nearly flat, and it does not turn the stairs around. A pause that ends with the price going the other way is not a landing but a top or a bottom, and the next paper is about those.

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