This Wedge Looks Dangerous

This is the QQQ which has been running ahead of the market.

An Ascending Wedge is a classic chart pattern and they get manipulated a lot because of that, normally they form, traders expect them to break down and retrace their base so many will short the wedge as it comes to its apex, then Wall Street shakes them out with an upside break out, and then the wedge usually falls apart and prices come back down as the wedge originally implied, it's just the shakeout feature Wall Street has added because of the predictability of traders and they can see the full open book of orders and know when traders take the short bait.

The QQQ above on an intraday chart of today has a fully formed wedge and the pop straight up out of it is usually the shakeout we see as the shorts now think the bearish wedge is a failed pattern. It doesn't stop there though, the Dogma of Technical Analysis in hundreds of books over the last century has taught traders that when a pattern fails as the ascending wedge right now appears to have, then they should close their position (cover the short) and take the opposite side of the trade (in this case go long). However the head faked wedge, ultimately (usually) does fail, making those traders 2x losers on the same pattern.