Descending Triangle: how does this pattern form, what market psychology does it reflect, and how reliable is it in practice? Give a real example only where one is genuinely well known, and say so plainly when it is not.

A continuation pattern formed by a flat horizontal support line connecting roughly equal swing lows, paired with a falling trendline connecting a series of lower highs above it, so the range compresses into a right-angled wedge until it breaks — typically downward — through the flat bottom. This is the mirror image of the ascending triangle: buyers keep stepping in at the same price floor so support holds flat, but sellers grow more aggressive on every bounce, unloading earlier and at progressively lower prices. Gold's slide below the roughly $1,550/oz level in April 2013, after repeatedly testing that support while forming lower highs, is often cited in retrospectives of that crash as a descending-triangle breakdown — though, again, pattern boundaries drawn after the fact are inherently a bit subjective. The buyers' bid at the floor isn't growing to match the increasing supply pressing down on it, so each rally into the falling trendline eats into available demand until it runs out. Skeptical take: a flat floor being tested repeatedly can look identical whether it's about to break or about to hold one more time, and there's no way to know which in advance from the shape alone. Failed breakdowns happen often enough that the pattern is better treated as a warning sign to watch than a firm sell signal.