Triple Top/bottom

What are Triple Tops and Bottoms?

A triple top is a reversal pattern of three distinct peaks at roughly the same level, separated by two reactions, completed when price breaks below the lowest point between the peaks. The triple bottom mirrors it: three troughs near a shared level, completed by a break above the intervening highs. Both are classical formations, catalogued alongside the double top and bottom in the standard charting literature.

The pattern records repeated failure at a price. Three times the market pushes into the same zone and three times the push is refused, which demonstrates that meaningful supply (at a top) or demand (at a bottom) is resting there. Each failed attempt also traps late entrants whose exits fuel the eventual break the other way. The third test is the distinguishing moment: many double tops resolve on the second failure, so a market that returns for a third attempt and still fails has given an unusually thorough demonstration that the level holds.

Genuine triple tops and bottoms are considerably rarer than doubles, and the label is often applied prematurely. Until the breakout completes the pattern, three touches of a level are equally consistent with a rectangle that will resolve as continuation, which is why classical charting insists the pattern does not exist until the confirming break.

How to identify a triple top or bottom

Three touches alone are not the pattern; the confirming break is.

1. 1Establish a prior trend into the level: an advance for a triple top, a decline for a triple bottom.
2. 2Find three distinct swings into roughly the same level, separated by two clear reactions; the extremes need not match to the tick, but none should stand out the way a head does.
3. 3Check spacing and depth: well-separated touches with meaningful reactions between them carry more information than three rapid taps.
4. 4Watch volume: classically it tends to diminish across successive tests, then expand on the breakout, especially for triple bottoms.
5. 5Confirm only on a decisive close beyond the confirmation level, the lowest reaction low for a top or the highest reaction high for a bottom.
6. 6Measure the pattern height from the extreme to the confirmation level and project it from the break as the conventional objective.

How traders use it

• Breakout trading: enter on the confirming break, stop beyond the nearest reaction swing, and project the pattern height via the measure rule; waiting for a retest of the broken level is the common conservative variant.
• Fading the third test: traders who read the level as strong resistance or support sometimes fade the third touch directly, with a tight stop beyond the extremes, accepting that a clean break through would stop them out.
• Level memory after completion: a broken triple top's confirmation level often behaves as resistance-turned-support territory in reverse, so the structure keeps informing trades after the pattern resolves.
• Honest limitation: before the break, the same three touches are indistinguishable from a range that will continue the trend, and a fourth touch that breaks through converts the pattern into a failed read; the label is only earned in hindsight of the confirming break.

Triple tops/bottoms vs. lookalikes