Technical analysis for beginners: The Fish

Here are a couple of charts. Look carefully at the movements in the first one over the course of Mon(day); and look at the movements in the second one between Thu(rsday) 9 o'clock and Fri(day) 8 o'clock:


What you can't see is that price in the first chart (UK Long Gilt futures, as it happens) went as high as 124 in the next two trading days. Maybe I'm imagining it, but it's tempting to see the actual price movements in each case as the skeleton of fish, as crudely illustrated here:

The lesson being (apart from the obvious conclusion that staring at charts is like staring at clouds - if you stare long enough at ever changing random patterns, you're bound to recognise things that aren't there), that once the fish pattern has completed itself, the price moves rapidly in the same direction as it moved before the tail was formed. I'm sure that I've spotted one or two others over the past few weeks and that subsequent price movements followed that rule, but we'll see.