A triangle is the market holding its breath. Every swing inside it gets smaller than the one before, buyers and sellers taking turns failing to make real progress, until the range has compressed so tightly that something has to give. The honest problem with triangles, and the reason this article has a direction problem in its name, is that the shape itself does not reliably tell you which way that release goes. What it tells you is that a release is coming and roughly when.
Three versions of the pattern exist and they carry genuinely different implications, which is exactly where most traders skip a step and lose the pattern's actual value.
Symmetrical triangles: pure compression, no lean
A symmetrical triangle has a falling upper boundary and a rising lower boundary meeting at a point, both sides converging at roughly the same rate. Neither side is dominant, which means the pattern genuinely does not favor a direction on its own. Whatever bias exists has to come from context outside the triangle: the direction of the larger trend it interrupts, or a level just above or below it that suggests which side is more likely to give first.
Ascending and descending triangles: the lean that means something
An ascending triangle has a flat upper boundary and a rising lower boundary, rising lows pressing repeatedly into the same ceiling. That shape suggests buyers are getting more aggressive each attempt even though sellers keep holding the same price, and it resolves upward more often than not. A descending triangle is the mirror: a flat lower boundary and a falling upper boundary, sellers pressing harder into the same floor each time, resolving downward more often than not. The lean in the boundaries is doing real work here, unlike the symmetrical version.
Trading the breakout, not the guess
The practical rule that keeps triangles honest: wait for the actual break rather than guessing the direction from the shape alone, even on the ascending and descending versions where the lean is informative. A full candle close beyond either boundary, ideally with some follow-through on the next candle, is the confirmation. Triangles are also notorious for false breaks in both directions before the real one, since compressed ranges attract exactly the kind of choppy indecision that shakes out early guesses. Entering only on a confirmed close costs a little of the move but avoids most of the fakeouts.
A worked example
EURUSD builds an ascending triangle over five sessions: resistance holding flat near 1.0880 across three touches, support rising from 1.0820 to 1.0840 to 1.0858 across the same period. Price breaks 1.0880 with a strong close at 1.0894. Triangle height, measured from the first touch of resistance at 1.0880 down to the triangle's starting support near 1.0820, is 60 pips, projecting a target near 1.0940. Entry on the breakout close at 1.0894, stop below the most recent rising support touch at 1.0858, a 36 pip risk. On a $10,000 account at one percent risk, $100, that is roughly 0.28 lots at $10 per pip. If price closes back below 1.0880 within the next candle or two, the breakout has failed and the trade is invalidated.