BTC - When Wild Barts Attack - What is a "Bart?"

The "Bart" is a bit of a meme but its also a regular, reoccurring pattern in crypto.

Bart Crypto Memes vs. Liquidity Gaps: In crypto, a “Bart” is a meme. However, in reality, a “Bart” is actually a common pattern in trading called a “liquidity gap.” Basically price tends to move in the path of least resistance, and a lack of liquidity (a lack of active trading in a price range) generally creates an area with low resistance. In short, a “Bart” is actually just a “common liquidity gap” being filled.

Barts as a Continuation Pattern: I consider Barts to be continuation patterns. In an uptrend both regular and inverse Barts tend to not effect the overall direction of the trend, and thus are bullish continuation. In a downtrend, same thing, they tend to be bearish continuation patterns.

No Pattern Has to Play out All the Time: Although in general buying the spiky consolidation of an inverse Bart and selling the spikes of a Bart is a good move. No pattern has to play out a given way. The pattern could break upward after consolidating instead of breaking down for example. Actual patterns work this way, and meme-based patterns are no exception.

Barts vs. Bull Flags or Bear Flags: A Bart tends to occur when the price can’t continue the trend after the initial candle and instead “the liquidity gap gets filled.” A bull flag or bear flag is like half a Bart that is expected to resolve into a continuation of the upward or downward movement instead of a reversal. A bull or bear flag that starts like a Bart is essentially a “runaway gap” with no fill. It can be hard to tell which pattern is forming, but keep in mind the start of each pattern can look similar. Given this, it can be a good move to open a position on the exit pump / dump (a failure of continuation at the end of a Bart).

Exit Pumps / Dumps ( AKA Failed Attempts to Continue the Move) Right Before the End of a Bart: Right before a Bart “Barts back down” we tend to get an exit pump (a quick pump that ends below the range that has been forming and starts to point down). Selling this exit pump (selling when it fails) is generally a good move. Then buying back below the previous range is generally a good idea, since the Bart tends to go back to the range before the initial green candle.

Bartish Expectations: Since the red candle tends to match the length of the green candle on a regular Bart (and the green the red on an inverse) it can be useful to see this formation coming into play on a number of levels. For one, it gives you a strong hint as to the size of the next major price move and the direction of this move. Keep in mind though, the second candle doesn’t always have to be the same length of the first, it just tends to be.

Barts Follow Loose Rules: One might loosely refer any pattern that sort of resembles the above as a Bart (for example a pattern in which the two candles don’t exactly match in size). Ultimately we are discussing a term that crypto traders on the internet made up, so the entire thing should be understood as a meme first and foremost and taken with a grain of salt. With that said, traditional liquidity gaps also behave this way and other common patterns like Wyckoff phases behave this way too. In fact, liquidity gaps aside, we can also generally compare some Bartish price action action to Wyckoff’s theories and to further see how there is a little more than just a clever meme going on here.