A pattern that exists at one resolution.

A rest, drawn

Rising three methods is five sessions. A long rising one. Then three small ones that stay inside its range and whose bodies are each no more than half of the first's. Then a second long rising one that closes above the first's close.

Read plainly, that is a move, a pause, and the move resuming. The three middle sessions did not take back what the first one gained — they did not leave its range at all. Falling three methods is the mirror.

The containment idea is 04.03.05's, applied to three sessions at once instead of one: the small boards sit inside the big one, in range rather than in body. That relationship is the next lesson, and this pattern is one of the places it turns up early.

Where the three middle sessions went

This is the strangest result in Part 04, and it is worth sitting with. Blending the five gives an ordinary long rising candle — and not one of the four numbers comes from the middle three sessions.

The open is the first session's. The close is the last session's. The highest and the lowest both belong to the outer two as well, because the middle sessions never left the first one's range — which is precisely what the definition required of them.

So the pause is not merely diminished by blending. It is arithmetically invisible. Had the market been recorded on a slower clock, those three days would not have shown up as anything at all, and the five-candle pattern would simply not exist.

Some patterns are artefacts of the timeframe you chose. Blend a three-methods and the pattern disappears, because its middle is made of sessions the blend cannot see.

What that does and does not prove

It does not prove the pattern is worthless. Three quiet days inside a big day's range is a real description of three real days, and noticing that a move paused without giving anything back is a reasonable thing to notice.

What it proves is narrower and more useful: the pattern is a fact about the resolution you are looking at, not about the market underneath it. 04.01.01 established that a period boundary is chosen rather than natural; this is the sharpest consequence of that anywhere in the Part.

It also gives you a question to ask of any multi-candle pattern you meet from here on. Would this still be here on a slower clock? Soldiers would — they blend into a marubozu. A morning star would — it blends into a hammer. A three-methods would not.

Containment has now turned up inside a continuation pattern, having already named two reversal ones. The next lesson stops working around it and measures it directly — with the other measuring stick.