Three Drives

The Pattern

Three Drives is the most visual pattern in the family. It is three successive pushes in the same direction, each reaching a new extreme, separated by two partial pullbacks. The pullbacks retrace a similar fraction of the prior drive, and the drives are roughly equal in size, which gives the structure its symmetry.

There is no single completion ratio; the pattern is defined by the rhythm of three matched drives and two matched corrections.

The Idea Behind It

Three matched pushes into the same extreme are read as a climax. By the third drive the move has shown its hand, momentum is fading, and the symmetry suggests the trend is running on fumes. The entry fades the third drive, betting the fourth push does not come.

When It Tends To Work

It works at the end of an extended run, when each successive drive is taking more effort to make less progress. A clean, symmetric Three Drives into a level is one of the more reliable exhaustion reads in classical charting.

When It Tends To Fail

It fails when the third drive is not the last. Strong trends can print four, five, or more drives, and fading the third leaves you against a move that keeps going. Symmetry is also in the eye of the reader, so loose settings find Three Drives that are not really there.

How This Strategy Trades It

On a completed Three Drives, the strategy enters at the close of the confirming bar against the third drive, targets a 0.618 retracement of the structure, and stops just beyond the final extreme. See the Harmonic Patterns family page for the shared mechanics.

What The Backtest Says

Three Drives is the strongest pattern in this family’s test. It turns a profit across NQ, ES, and gold on the 15-minute samples below, and holds up on several of the 5-minute cells too. Of the nine patterns, this is the one whose mechanical results most consistently point the same way.