A bull pennant is a short breather in a stock that just made a strong run higher — and it usually ends with another push up. Here's how to recognize one, where you'd buy, where you'd get out, and how often it really works.
A bull pennant (also called a bullish pennant) is a pause that forms right after a stock makes a strong, fast move higher. The price stops climbing and drifts sideways in smaller and smaller swings, so the highs and lows squeeze toward each other into a little triangle shape — like a small flag, or pennant, flying at the top of a flagpole.
The pause is usually short. What makes it “bullish” is what tends to happen next: the same buying pressure that drove the first leg up returns, and the price breaks out of the little pennant and continues higher.
You'll see the same shape called a pennant pattern, a bullish pennant flag, or a bull flag pennant — the names blur together. What matters is the two ingredients: a strong pole up, then a tight squeeze.
Checking a chart by hand? Look for all four of these:
Trading volume (how many shares change hands) usually dries up inside the pennant, then jumps on the breakout day. Think of it as the market holding its breath, then exhaling.
We don't quote textbook folklore — we run the pattern over years of daily price history for hundreds of stocks, simulate every trade with the exact entry and exit rules this guide teaches, and count what happened. The numbers below come from that test and refresh after every nightly scan.
Read them like a card player, not a fortune teller: a 55–60% win rate doesn't mean the next one works. It means that over many trades, with losses kept small by the safety exit, the math has been on the pattern's side.
Historical results of the simulated strategy described above (1986-11-26 – 2026-06-08), refreshed nightly — not a prediction. How we test →
The stocks with the strongest historical hit rate for this pattern in our backtest (minimum sample applied).
| Stock | Win rate | Avg return | Trades |
|---|---|---|---|
| DGDollar General | 100.0% | +1.36R | 9 |
| HCAHca Holdings | 90.0% | +1.23R | 10 |
| BXBlackstone | 88.9% | +1.32R | 18 |
| TSLATesla | 88.2% | +1.44R | 17 |
| MPCMarathon Petroleum | 87.5% | +0.78R | 8 |
| PDDPinduoduo | 87.5% | +1.57R | 8 |
| FISVFiserv | 86.2% | +0.99R | 29 |
| AIZAssurant | 84.6% | +0.90R | 13 |
| CBOECboe Global Markets | 84.6% | +1.02R | 13 |
| FSLRFirst Solar | 84.6% | +1.40R | 13 |
Our screener re-draws the lines on 500+ stocks every night and flags each one whose chart currently fits the checklist above. Here's what it found in its latest scan.
80 fresh bull pennants formed in the last 45 days across the 500+ stocks we scan (574 charts tracked for this pattern in total). Scan updated Jul 2, 2026.
A real bull pennant from the latest scan — detected 2026-07-02 on BBY. Live chart, live lines.
79 more live bull pennant setups — every chart, breakout level, and target.
Everything below comes from rules we've tested on thousands of historical trades — not folklore. Tap through the three steps to see each one on the chart.
The pennant's upper line is a ceiling the price keeps bumping into. Set your order at that ceiling in advance, so you're in the moment the price pushes through it. If the stock opens the day already above the line (it “gapped” overnight), your buy simply happens at that morning's opening price. What you should NOT do is watch the big breakout day finish and buy at its closing price — same trade, worse price. We tested both ways across roughly 54,000 pattern trades: buying at the line won just as often but made about 28% more overall, purely from getting a better price.
Right before the breakout, the price makes one final small dip (traders call it the “swing low”). If the price later falls back below that dip, the pennant has failed — get out. You decide this exit BEFORE you buy, so a failed trade costs a small, known amount. Every win-rate number on this page assumes you follow it.
Measure the pennant's own height, tallest point to lowest, and project that distance up from the breakout — that's the natural first target (the “measured move”). But here's what our testing found for bull pennants specifically: when the target hits, the move often keeps going. Staying in as long as the price holds above its average of the last 10 days (the “10-day moving average”) — and only selling when a day finally closes below it — made more money than selling at the target.
Set your order at the line in advance — you're in the moment price pushes through, not at the day's much higher close.
A pennant takes the direction of the move that came before it. After a strong run UP, it's a bull pennant and usually breaks higher. After a steep drop, the same shape is a bear pennant and usually breaks lower.
“Usually” is the honest word. In our own testing (the numbers above), bull pennants follow through more often than not — but a meaningful share of them fail. That's not a flaw in the pattern; it's why the trade comes with a pre-decided exit if it goes wrong.
The honest way to judge a pattern is to watch completed examples — winners and losers. These are real, recent bull-pennant trades from our nightly test, each linked to that stock's live chart.
These three get mixed up constantly, and honestly, they trade almost the same way. The difference is the shape of the pause.
The pause drifts gently DOWNWARD between two parallel lines — a small tilted rectangle — instead of squeezing to a point. Same pole, same bullish lean.
The ceiling is flat (the same price keeps rejecting it) while the floor rises. It doesn't need a pole, and it builds over weeks rather than days.
The same squeezing shape as a pennant but bigger and slower, and without needing the sharp pole in front. Without the pole, the breakout direction is more of a coin flip.
Educational content, not investment advice. Backtest statistics are historical results of a simulated strategy, refreshed nightly — they describe the past, not the next trade.