A continuation pattern shaped like a J laid on its side: price rolls down into a rounded bottom and lifts back out. It resembles a cup but is asymmetric, and the crowd's hesitation and re-acceleration are written into the curve.
A scallop is a continuation pattern that advances in a curve shaped like a J laid on its side.
Partway through an uptrend, price eases back, rounds out into a bottom, then lifts back up and clears the prior high. Seen from the side, it slides down from the left rim, sweeps along a rounded bottom, and rises sharply at the right rim, much like the curved edge of a scallop shell.
The name and the definition were set out by Thomas Bulkowski. In his taxonomy, the form that lifts out of a rounded bottom is an ascending scallop, and the form that breaks down out of a rounded top is a descending scallop. The ascending scallop appears as a continuation of an uptrend, the descending scallop as a continuation of a downtrend.
At a glance it looks like a cup and handle or a rounding bottom. The difference is that it is asymmetric. A cup has left and right rims at roughly the same height, while a scallop has one side (usually the right) deeper and longer, with rims that do not line up. The right rim lifting from a position higher than the left rim is exactly what lets it read as a continuation rather than a reversal.
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