Bear Flag

A bear flag is the downside continuation pattern: a steep decline (the pole) followed by a weak upward drift (the flag), resolved by a breakdown that extends the decline. The feeble bounce is the point; sellers are so much in control that the relief rally cannot even retrace much of the drop.

The volume signature mirrors the bull flag: heavy on the pole down, light on the drift up, heavy again on the breakdown. A bounce on strong volume that recovers most of the pole is not a bear flag, it is a contested reversal attempt, and shorting it as a flag is how traders end up on the wrong side of a V-shaped recovery.

The measured move subtracts the pole's height from the breakdown point. In practice bear flags in downtrending markets resolve lower often enough to trade, and in uptrending markets they fail often enough to skip.