Speed Resistance Lines

What are Speed Resistance Lines?

Speed resistance lines, or speedlines, are a fan tool credited to market analyst Edson Gould. In an uptrend, the vertical rise from a significant swing low to a swing high is divided into thirds; from the same low, one ray is drawn through the two-thirds level and another through the one-third level measured at the high's position. Together with the original low-to-high line, that gives three rays of decreasing slope: the trend's full speed and two slower fractions of it. The construction mirrors downward from a high in a downtrend.

The lines act as trend-speed benchmarks. A correction that holds the 2/3 speedline keeps most of the advance's pace intact; losing it shifts attention to the 1/3 line, and breaking both suggests the trend's rate has failed even if price still sits above the swing low. The name quadrant lines, sometimes grouped with speedlines, refers to a related construction that splits the same swing into fourths rather than thirds. As with any anchored geometry, the levels depend entirely on which swing points are chosen, and reactions at them are tendencies, not guarantees.

How traders use it

• As trailing trend gauges in an established move: the 2/3 line is watched as the first defense during pullbacks, then the 1/3 line, with each loss treated as a downgrade of trend strength rather than an instant reversal call.
• As a sloped alternative to one-third and two-thirds retracement rules: the speedline version expresses those correction depths as support that rises (or falls) with time instead of static horizontal levels.
• As a role-reversal frame: a broken speedline is watched as resistance on the retest, the same logic applied to an ordinary trendline.