Check duration, breakout labels, and throwback timing before rectangle measuring rules

Check three labels before any measuring rule

Editorial view: treat rectangle critique as a definitions checklist. Line up the duration filter, the premature-versus-lasting breakout label, and the throwback clock before anyone compares measuring rules.

The notes below describe the historical workflow. Any comparison drawn from them is editorial and is not part of the archive record.

Duration is not a shared filter

One write-up treated rectangles as long-horizon structures lasting from three months to a year, while another catalog of the same pattern stated that no such minimum duration exists.

Catalog averages for rectangle length were given as three months in an earlier compilation and 2.5 months in a later one, so a typical case would miss a three-month minimum filter.

The reply estimated typical duration from a frequency distribution of 110 to 130 days rather than from the arithmetic average.

The samples are not the same object

The study under critique used 100 rectangles, while the catalog sample was described as 297 combined cases in an earlier compilation and 1,050 in a later one.

Combined sampling meant splitting rectangles into tops and bottoms, then further by bull or bear regime and by upside or downside breakout.

The reply limited the sample to rectangle bottoms with upside breakouts because the work was aimed at realistic upside targets.

Premature and lasting breakouts can look the same

A rectangle is a sideways congestion bounded by roughly parallel support and resistance, later split in research into tops versus bottoms and by breakout direction. A breakout is the lasting move through a rectangle boundary that is treated as the pattern's directional resolution.

A premature breakout is a brief trip through a boundary that may later be relabeled either as a false start or as a genuine break, depending on the catalog rules.

A remark that premature breaks often reverse into the opposite lasting exit was later scoped to rectangle bottoms only, not tops.

Once premature and lasting breakouts were treated as visually indistinguishable, one catalog counted premature breaks as genuine rather than as separate false signals.

The throwback clock is a 30-day white-space test

A throwback follows an upside break and a pullback follows a downside break. Both are a return toward the breakout price after an exit.

A throwback was specified as a return to or near the breakout price within 30 days, with unused price space between the hook and that price, rather than a one- to three-day slide along the breakout level. That unused-space requirement is the white-space test.

Throwback statistics in the reply covered only the first return after the initial breakout, framed as an entry-timing question after confirmation.

Failure rate sits apart from the measuring rule

Failure rate was defined as the share of formations that do not behave as expected, including a 5% adverse-move class, and was argued to be independent of the height-based measuring formula.

A measuring rule is a height-based target taken from the full rectangle and applied from the breakout price, sometimes scaled rather than used at full size.

Editorial view: if duration, breakout labels, and the throwback clock differ, a later target comparison is mixing unlike events.