Does a flagpole make a triangle a better trade?
Version 1.0 · report 2026-09-22 · study recorded 2026-07-15

QUESTION AND FINDING
A sharp move before the triangle did not identify better-paying trades in this sample. Triangles without a flagpole had higher win rates and average payoffs in both directions. That challenges the reason for requiring a pole, but does not prove poles hurt performance.

METHOD
Source and date: Research log: 2026-07-15_pennant-flagpole-cohort-split.md. Original full-universe replay covered 628 symbols and generated 76,624 trades before filtering. This article reports only the four symmetrical-triangle groups.
Selection: Drop skipped trades; remove overlaps across the full ledger, including wedge families, before grouping. Apply the recorded 0.3% minimum entry-risk floor and pennant_aware stop model.
Pole classification: Run _has_substantial_pole on symmetrical_triangle trades using pattern_start_index and pattern_end_index, with height from _pattern_high_low_height_pct. Detection used gap_start_idx for its height inputs; this reconstruction is not byte-identical and can differ at the boundary.
Comparison: Upward: 7,869 without a pole and 1,369 with one. Downward: 7,604 without a pole and 1,889 with one. Ascending/descending triangles, squeezes and wedges are excluded from the displayed results.
Metrics: Win rate counts positive completed outcomes. Mean R averages profit or loss divided by original planned risk. Profit factor divides total positive R by the absolute total negative R. All figures retain the saved summary precision; counts of wins are not reconstructed from rounded rates.
History and execution: Daily charts using the history available per symbol at the July 15, 2026 replay. Exact first and last trade dates and a cost-adjusted portfolio result were not retained in the source summary. Cached detection payloads were used; detection determinism was not reverified.
Available evidence: Dated internal methodology and summary table. The original observation rows and session-local analysis script were not recovered for this publication. The CSV is a summary-table download, not an independent rerun.

SOURCE
Source: TradingPal’s July 15, 2026 flagpole comparison. This article preserves the recorded summary precision for symmetrical triangles only. Original individual trade rows were not recovered for this edition.

LIMITATIONS
- These are historical simulations, not live investment returns or independently reviewed academic papers. Several trades share stocks and market periods, so the observations are not independent.
- Historical pattern confirmation can use information learned later. The available universe also underrepresents failed and delisted companies. These results do not establish performance on genuinely unseen data.
- Trading costs, slippage, stock-borrow fees and portfolio capacity are not deducted here. Daily bars cannot reproduce every intraday fill. A safety exit can lose more than the amount originally planned.
- The flagpole groups were smaller than the no-pole groups. No confidence intervals or independent follow-up establish whether the observed differences are distinguishable from chance.
- Pole classification was reconstructed after the historical replay using trade geometry; borderline cases can differ from classification at detection.
- Exact history endpoints and original individual trade rows were not recovered. Do not combine these July 15 figures with the separate July 16 ledger used for the market-context article.

CITATION
TradingPal Research (2026-09-22). Does a flagpole make a triangle a better trade? Version 1.0. Historical study recorded 2026-07-15. https://tradingpal.io/learn/research/triangle-flagpole-study