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Inverse head and shoulders

A bottoming shape of three troughs where the middle one is deepest, completed on a close above the neckline joining the two intervening peaks.

Head and shoulders topThree peaks, the middle one highest, sitting on a flat neckline that price later falls through.pricetimeLeft shoulderHeadRight shoulderNecklineprice closes back through it
Head and shoulders. Three peaks in a row, the middle one highest, with the two dips between them joined by a line called the neckline. Traders watch for price to close back through that line. Turned upside down the same shape is the inverse head and shoulders.

The upside-down head-and-shoulders. A low, a lower low, then a higher low, with the recovery highs between them forming the neckline. Completion requires a close above that line.

The conventional target projects the distance from the head to the neckline upward from the break, a measured-move. Stops usually sit under the right shoulder, which gives a defined risk that is often much smaller than the target, and that geometry is the main reason the pattern is popular.

As with all named patterns, failure is frequent and the pattern is easiest to see once it has already worked. Requiring a retest of the neckline before entering trades a lower fill for fewer false starts, at the cost of missing the fastest examples.

Related: head-and-shoulders, neckline, measured-move, reversal-pattern, rounding-bottom

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