Gartley

What this pattern measures

The Gartley is the oldest of the harmonic patterns, named for H.M. Gartley who described the shape in 1935. It is a five-point structure, X to A to B to C to D, defined by Fibonacci ratios between the legs. The signature is the completion: D sits at a 0.786 retracement of the whole X-to-A leg.

This page measures what happened after each completed Gartley, scored by the trade the structure implies: enter at the reversal point, target a 0.618 retracement of the move, stop just beyond the completion.

Definitions used on this page:

• B retraces 0.618 of XA, C retraces 0.382 to 0.886 of AB, D projects 1.272 to 1.618 of BC, and D lands at 0.786 of XA. All four must hold at once.
• Pivots are confirmed swing highs and lows at balanced strictness: 3 bars on each side, with a 5% tolerance on every ratio. A pattern is counted only on the bar its final pivot confirms, so nothing is detected in hindsight.
• The implied trade enters at the close of the confirming bar, targets a 0.618 retracement of the structure, and stops just beyond D. It is given 60 bars to resolve before being marked to market as a timeout.
• Outcomes are measured on CME:NQ at 15-minute and 5-minute bars.

Why it matters

A Gartley forms inside a trend. The X-to-A move is the trend leg, and everything after it is a pullback that overshoots then completes at a measured depth. D is read as the point where the pullback is exhausted and the original trend is likely to resume. Because D stays well short of X, the Gartley is a “buy the dip” structure rather than a bet on a full reversal, and the shallow completion keeps the stop close.

How to read the numbers

• Win rate is the share of decided trades, wins plus losses, that reached the target before the stop. Timeouts are excluded from this denominator and reported on their own.
• Avg return is the mean outcome across every completed pattern, signed so positive favours the trade direction.
• Avg win and avg loss split the decided trades into their winning and losing sides, useful for weighing the size of wins against losses.
• Bullish and bearish counts show which direction the structure completed in.

What’s not here

• No trend filter. The structure is detected on geometry alone, with no check that the larger trend agrees.
• No confluence with support, resistance, or higher-timeframe levels, which traders normally use to weight a completion.
• A single contract and two intraday timeframes. Daily Gartleys are far too rare to score.