How to Trade the Gartley Pattern in Forex

The gartley pattern is a five-point price structure held together by two Fibonacci numbers. Point B retraces about 0.618 of the first leg, and point D completes near 0.786 of it.

This guide shows how to draw the gartley pattern, where the entry and stop belong, and what the zone gives you when it works. It also covers the failure case, which arrives often enough to plan for.

What the Gartley Pattern Looks Like on a Chart

Five turning points, four legs, one zone. The first leg runs from X to A, then price pulls back to B, rallies or falls to C, and finishes at D.

Below sits a bullish example on EURUSD weekly bars, running from October 2023 to April 2024. Point D printed at 1.06011, with C above it at 1.09813.

Look at where D stopped. It finished short of X, so the whole shape stayed inside the original XA leg, which is the defining feature of this pattern.

The Two Numbers That Define It

B should retrace roughly 0.618 of the XA leg. That single measurement rules out most swings before you go any further.

D should then complete near 0.786 of XA. Because 0.786 is the square root of 0.618, the two figures belong to the same family rather than sitting there at random.

Everything else is secondary. BC usually retraces between 0.382 and 0.886 of AB, and CD often extends between 1.13 and 1.618 of BC.

Reading the Real Ratios

Live charts never match the textbook exactly. On that EURUSD example, AB measured 0.643 of XA rather than 0.618.

The AD leg came in at 0.779 instead of 0.786. BC retraced 0.644 of AB, and CD extended 1.328 of BC.

Every figure sits a little off the ideal. That gap is normal, and it explains why traders work with bands rather than exact levels.

Bullish and Bearish Versions

The shape works in both directions. A bullish gartley starts with X at a high and finishes with D at a low, so the plan becomes a buy into the zone.

Flip the drawing for the bearish version. X then sits at a low, D forms at a high, and the plan turns into a sell.

Nothing else changes at all. Ratios, tolerance and stop placement carry across untouched, which keeps the rule set short.

What Has to Come Before

A gartley needs a clean XA leg behind it. Without an obvious first swing you have nothing to measure against, and the ratios turn into guesswork.

Choose swings that stand out at a glance. If you have to zoom and squint to find X, the shape probably lives in your imagination rather than on the chart.

Context matters as much as the drawing. Our page on support and resistance covers the levels that turn an ordinary zone into an interesting one.

How to Trade the Gartley Pattern, Step by Step

The sequence stays the same every time. Follow it in order and the shape either qualifies or it does not.

1. Mark a clean XA leg. Pick the swing you would point at without hesitating.
2. Measure AB against XA. Look for a retracement near 0.618 before continuing.
3. Check the BC leg. It should retrace part of AB without exceeding point A.
4. Project CD from BC. Extend the leg forward and note where it lands.
5. Draw the D zone. Band it around 0.786 of XA rather than fixing a single price.
6. Set the stop past X. Then size the position from that distance and place the order.

Step two does the filtering. A B point far from 0.618 points you toward a different name in the family, or toward no name at all.

Never reorder those steps. Traders who project D first end up dragging X until the arithmetic agrees with the trade they already wanted.

Why 0.786 Rather Than 0.618

The completion level surprises people at first. Most Fibonacci work stops at 0.618, so a deeper number needs explaining.

Where the Number Comes From

Take the square root of 0.618 and you land on roughly 0.786. The two figures therefore belong to the same set rather than arriving from nowhere.

Charting platforms often hide 0.786 by default. Add it to your retracement tool before you start, because the level does no work while it stays invisible.

What the Depth Implies

A pullback reaching 0.786 has given back most of the first leg. Very little of the original move survives, which is why the level sits so close to invalidation.

That closeness cuts both ways. The stop stays tight, though the margin between a valid shape and a broken one narrows to almost nothing.

The Practical Consequence

Entries at 0.786 feel uncomfortable. You buy after a deep decline or sell after a deep rally, and the chart looks wrong at exactly that moment.

Accept the discomfort or skip the pattern. Waiting for a friendlier price simply moves you outside the zone that defined the trade.

Drawing the D Zone Properly

The zone carries every decision that follows. Draw it carelessly and the rest of the plan inherits the error.

A Band, Not a Line

Use a range around 0.786 rather than a single price. Most traders allow a small window either side, sized to the instrument and the timeframe.

Wide bands catch more setups and cost more when they fail. Narrow bands miss valid shapes, so pick a width and apply it consistently instead of adjusting per trade.

Write the width into your plan. A tolerance you decide in the moment is not a rule; it is a preference dressed up as one.

Where the Zone Should Land

A D zone in empty space carries little weight. The same zone resting on a prior level, a session extreme or a round number deserves far more attention.

So check the chart before you check the arithmetic. If nothing happened at that price before, the ratio alone is thin evidence.

Higher-timeframe context helps here too. A zone that agrees with the weekly trend gives you room, while one that fights it usually gets fewer bars to work.

Stacking Other Evidence On the Zone

A band gains weight when other things agree with it. An old swing point, a round number or a moving average sitting in the same place all count.

Candles matter at the touch as well. A long rejection wick into the zone tells a different story from a heavy close straight through it.

Do not turn this into a checklist of ten filters. Two independent reasons beat six correlated ones, and the extra filters mostly remove trades at random.

When to Walk Away

Some shapes almost qualify. B lands at 0.55, or CD overshoots the projection badly, and the temptation is to call it close enough.

Skip those. The value of a rule set comes from the trades it removes, not from the ones it lets through.

Missing a good trade costs you nothing you had. Taking a bad one costs real money, so the asymmetry favours patience.

A Worked Example on the Four-Hour Chart

Numbers make this concrete. Take the bearish gartley that formed on EURCAD across four-hour bars between 16 and 22 July 2026.

Reading the Legs

AB retraced 0.647 of XA, close to the 0.618 the pattern expects. BC came in shallow at 0.372 of AB, and CD extended 1.542 of BC.

Point D printed at 1.60923, with C below it at 1.60539. The AD leg measured 0.778 of XA, a shade inside the 0.786 the name calls for.

Notice the shallow BC. It sat below the usual 0.382 floor, which is exactly the kind of detail two analysts would argue about.

Entry, Stop and Target

The entry goes at the D zone, so a sell rests near 1.60923. Your stop sits above X, where the AD ratio stops making sense.

The first reference target is C, down at 1.60539. Some traders take a second target at the 0.618 retracement of the whole CD leg.

Run the numbers before committing. Our risk reward calculator turns the stop distance and the target distance into a ratio in a few seconds.

Managing the Position

Take something at C if price gets there. Booking part of the trade early makes the rest far easier to hold through an ordinary pullback.

Then trail behind structure rather than by a fixed number of pips. Each new lower high on a short gives you a fresh reference, and the market sets the pace.

Size the trade from the stop, never from conviction. Our position size calculator handles that arithmetic so the risk stays constant across setups.

What Costs Do to a Small Shape

This EURCAD example spanned a modest range. Spread and swap eat a bigger share of a short move than of a long one, so the same ratio flatters bigger patterns.

Check the cost against the target before entering. If the spread takes a tenth of the distance to C, the setup needs more room than it has.

Weekly shapes face the opposite problem. They give plenty of room and demand wide stops, which forces smaller positions for the same risk.

Where the Gartley Loses Its Edge

Honest limits belong in the middle of a guide, not buried at the end. Three problems apply to every harmonic, and this one is no exception.

Tolerances Are Not Standard

One trader accepts a B retracement between 0.55 and 0.68. Another demands 0.618 within a couple of percent, and a third works in fixed pip windows.

So the same three swings produce different labels. That flexibility makes the shape hard to test and easy to fit after the fact.

The Evidence Base Is Thin

No solid published work shows that harmonic ratios beat plain level reading. Studies of classical chart patterns generally report modest and inconsistent results once costs enter the picture.

That does not make the framework worthless. It does mean any confident claim about how often this shape delivers deserves real suspicion.

Small Samples Prove Nothing

A gallery of ten winning gartleys settles no argument. Anyone can assemble that gallery after the fact, whatever the underlying framework.

Build your own count instead. Record every zone you marked, winners and losers alike, and the picture usually turns more sober within weeks.

Hindsight Flatters Every Example

Completed gartleys look obvious in a screenshot. Live, you are choosing between two candidate X points while the C leg is still forming.

Our note on how to use Fibonacci retracement covers the same selection problem from the tool side.

The Honest Summary

A gartley turns a vague sense that price has fallen far enough into a defined band with a defined exit. That structure genuinely helps you plan and size a trade.

It is not proof that the ratios predict anything. Judge each zone by where it lands and by what the wider chart says, then let the stop settle the argument when the read goes wrong.

Common Gartley Mistakes and the Fixes

Most losses around this shape trace back to a short list of habits. The key points panel below collects what weakens a reading before the zone arrives.

Moving X Until the Ratios Fit

Dragging a swing point two bars left is fitting, not analysis. Fix X first, measure second, and accept the answer the chart gives you.

Entering Before D Arrives

Anticipating the zone costs you the one advantage the framework offers. Wait for price to reach the band, then act on the plan you already wrote.

Widening the Stop After Entry

Price beyond X means the AD ratio no longer holds. At that point the reason for the trade has gone, so moving the stop simply funds a worse exit.

Ignoring the Higher Timeframe

A neat four-hour gartley against a firm weekly trend fights the larger flow. Check the bigger chart first, or cut your size when the two disagree.

Treating C as a Promise

The move back toward C is a projection. Price often stalls well short, so plan partial exits rather than holding for the full distance by default.

Skipping the Session Check

A zone reached during thin hours behaves differently from one reached at the London open. Note the session on the touch, then adjust what you expect next.

Trading Every Shape You Find

Lower timeframes throw up candidates constantly. Pick one chart, apply one tolerance, and let the rest go past without comment.

Adding to a Losing Position Inside the Zone

A band has width, so averaging down feels defensible. Yet the zone exists to be respected once, not filled repeatedly while price walks through it.

Confusing the Shape With a Trend Signal

A gartley describes a completed retracement. It says nothing about whether the wider trend has turned, so read it as a zone rather than as a change of direction.

Gartley Quick Reference

Keep this table beside the chart until the ratios feel automatic. Each row states a condition rather than an outcome.

Element	What to check	Common practice
XA leg	A clean, obvious first swing	Visible without zooming
AB retracement	Near 0.618 of XA	Small band either side
BC retracement	Part of AB, not beyond A	Roughly 0.382 to 0.886
CD extension	Projection from BC	Roughly 1.13 to 1.618
D completion	Near 0.786 of XA	Drawn as a band, inside X
Stop	Beyond X	Set before the entry order
First target	Back toward C	Partial exit, not the full size

Notice what the table leaves out. Nothing here says how often the shape follows through, because that figure shifts with the market, the period and the tolerance you apply.

When the Gartley Falls Short of Target

Failures teach faster than tidy examples. Below is a bearish gartley on GBPJPY daily bars, formed between 3 February and 10 March 2026, where the target never arrived.

What the Legs Looked Like

AB retraced 0.629 of XA, well inside the usual band. The AD leg finished at 0.781, almost exactly the 0.786 the name wants.

Point D printed at 213.308, with C down at 209.189. On paper the shape qualified cleanly, and the ratios were tidier than most live examples.

The Move That Nearly Worked

Price turned at the zone exactly as the pattern asked. The sell ran lower for three weeks and reached 209.632 on 30 March.

That low sat 44 pips above the C target at 209.189. So the move covered most of the projected distance and still left nothing booked.

How It Ended

From there price turned back up. It cleared X at 215.008 on 12 April, which is the level that voids the AD ratio and the trade along with it.

Read the sequence carefully. The zone did its work and the reversal came; the target simply sat beyond where the move could reach.

What the Failure Costs

A stop just past X keeps the damage contained. That tight invalidation is the quiet advantage of the framework, since it sits close to the entry by construction.

Traders who widen it lose that advantage instantly. Once the ratio breaks, holding on becomes hope with a chart attached.

Failure Modes Worth Naming

Three broad failures cover most of them. Price ignores the zone entirely, reverses briefly then breaks it, or turns cleanly yet stalls before C ever arrives.

The third case frustrates people most. Nothing technically went wrong, yet the reward never justified the risk you took at the zone.

Plan for that outcome in advance. A partial exit near C turns a stalled move into a small gain rather than a round trip.

The Habit Worth Building

Log every zone you marked, including the ones that failed. A personal record teaches you more about your own pairs than any general guide can.

Then review the losers first. Patterns in your own mistakes show up faster than patterns in the market.

Related Concepts to Study Next

The gartley belongs to a wider family. Our orientation guide covers the full list of harmonic patterns and how the ratios sort them.

Its closest relative deserves separate study. Two numbers separate this shape from the bat, and our comparison of the bat and the gartley takes them apart.

Then look at the version where D escapes the XA leg entirely. Our page on the butterfly harmonic explains what changes when the completion sits beyond X.

For tooling, our harmonic indicators archive collects the scanners that draw XABCD legs, and our pattern recognition indicators archive covers the broader shape detectors.

A Sensible Order of Study

Start with levels, since a zone in empty space rarely holds. Add trend reading next, because a gartley against a strong flow gets very few bars to work with.

Bring the ratios in last. Learning them late keeps the arithmetic where it belongs, as a refinement on top of chart reading rather than a substitute for it.

Then practise on closed charts before risking money. Replay a month of bars, mark each zone as it forms, and count honestly how many you would have spotted live.

Finally, keep the sample honest. Twenty logged setups tell you more than two hundred screenshots collected from other people.

FAQ

What is the gartley pattern?

It is a five-point harmonic structure labelled X, A, B, C and D. B retraces about 0.618 of the XA leg, and D completes near 0.786 of XA, which keeps the whole shape inside the original swing.

How is a gartley different from a bat?

Two numbers decide it. A gartley has B near 0.618 and D near 0.786, while a bat has a shallower B between 0.382 and 0.5 with D near 0.886. Both finish inside X, so the depth of those two points is the whole distinction.

Where do I put the stop?

Beyond X, because price reaching X breaks the 0.786 relationship the pattern depends on. Set that level before you place the entry, then size the position so the distance costs you a fixed share of the account.

What target should I use?

Point C serves as the first reference, and many traders take a partial exit there. Some add a second target at the 0.618 retracement of the CD leg. Treat both as projections rather than expectations.

Does the gartley work on every timeframe?

It draws on any chart, though four-hour and daily bars give the swings room to stand out. Lower timeframes produce far more candidates, and most dissolve before D arrives.

How much tolerance should I allow on the ratios?

Enough to catch real swings and little enough to reject weak ones. Live examples routinely print 0.64 instead of 0.618 and 0.78 instead of 0.786, so a small band either side is normal. Decide the width in advance and apply it to every setup.

Is the gartley pattern reliable?

No published evidence shows that harmonic ratios outperform ordinary support and resistance reading. What the shape does give you is a defined zone, a defined entry and a close invalidation, which helps you plan and size a trade. Treat any specific claim about how reliably it delivers as unsupported. Results are not guaranteed; past performance is not indicative of future results.