Triple Top: 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 triple top is three peaks at roughly equivalent highs with two troughs between them, with the neckline typically drawn at the lower of those troughs. Structurally it is a double top that got one more attempt: a fixed level of supply that buyers test three separate times and fail to clear, with each failed attempt trapping a fresh cohort of buyers who will sell into any bounce once the neckline finally breaks. Gold's repeated failures to sustain a break above the roughly $1,900-$1,800/oz area across 2011-2013 is sometimes cited as a triple-top-like topping process before its subsequent multi-year decline, though I'd hold that example loosely — commodity tops are often messier and slower than the clean textbook shape. It is rarer than the double top because most tops resolve before a third attempt. Confirmation is a close below the neckline on expanding volume; anything above it is a range, and a decisive break of the triple highs is actually a bullish resolution, not a failed bearish pattern. The caveat: precisely because the shape is uncommon, it is over-identified — any sideways congestion contains three touches of something if you loosen your tolerance.