Darvas Box
The Darvas Box, from Nicolas Darvas's How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market, frames a consolidation as a box: a ceiling price repeatedly rejects advances and a floor repeatedly holds declines. The box provides both a breakout trigger and a natural stop.
- Bias
- Bullish
- Category
- Chart Patterns
- Scan cadence
- Every close
What has to be true for a Darvas Box to trigger
- A clearly defined ceiling touched more than once without being cleared
- A floor that holds on the pullbacks within the range
- Price contained inside the box rather than repeatedly piercing it
- A prior advance into the box
- Enough bars for the boundaries to be real levels rather than noise
How PatternGrade grades it
Boxes with more touches of each boundary, tighter height relative to volatility, and no false breaks grade higher. A wide box with a vague ceiling grades B.
Every scanner grades its hits A+, A or B from the pattern's own measurable structure. The grading is deterministic — the same chart always produces the same grade. It describes how closely the chart matches the pattern, not how likely anything is to happen; no hit rate or probability is attached to a grade. The reasoning is set out in the methodology.
What a Darvas Box looks like in practice
A stock advances to $52, sells off to $46, and over the next six weeks tests $52 three separate times without closing above it, while $46 holds on each of four pullbacks. Two clean horizontal lines contain everything. Volume dries up as the box matures. By the final test of the ceiling it is running well below the average of the advance that created the box.
How a Darvas Box fails
The box breaks the wrong way: price closes decisively below the floor, which invalidates the accumulation reading entirely. More often, though, the box simply drifts. The ceiling and floor stop being respected, highs and lows start landing at random levels inside the range, and what was a clean box becomes formless chop. A box needs its boundaries to be tested and to hold; once they are being ignored the pattern has lost the evidence it rests on.
What this pattern is telling you
The box's value is its defined risk, not its predictive power. Boxes break both ways, and a break below the floor is as valid a signal as a break above the ceiling.
PatternGrade is not a financial advisor and does not give buy or sell recommendations. Targets and stops shown on a pattern are reference levels derived from its geometry, not advice.
How to scan for Darvas Box setups
PatternGrade rescans every liquid US stock (~4,500 names) for this pattern after every close and returns the hits as a graded list, with the pattern drawn on each chart, so you review setups rather than hunt for them.
Join the waitlist to be invited when sign-ups reopen and see the current Darvas Box list, or browse all 75 patterns.
Darvas Box FAQ
What is the Darvas Box theory?
A trading method that frames consolidations as boxes bounded by a ceiling and a floor, buying breaks above the ceiling and using the floor as the stop.
How do I find Darvas Box setups?
PatternGrade's Darvas Box scanner identifies stocks currently trading inside a well-defined box across every liquid US stock, refreshed after each close.
Who was Nicolas Darvas?
A professional dancer who traded stocks while touring in the 1950s and described his method in How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market. Working from telegrams rather than live quotes, he tracked stocks as a series of price boxes and acted when one was cleared. The constraint produced a genuinely mechanical, end-of-day method.
How many touches does a box need?
At least two at each boundary, and three or more is stronger. A single high and a single low define a range, not a box. The repetition is what shows the level is being actively defended.
Is the Darvas box still useful?
The underlying observation holds up: consolidation between defined levels precedes a directional move. The pattern is also unusually easy to define mechanically, which is why it scans well. What has changed is that it is no longer obscure, so the clean textbook cases are less common than they were.
Where does the stop go on a Darvas box?
The structural invalidation level is the box floor: below it, the premise of the pattern is gone. PatternGrade draws that level from the box geometry as a reference. It is not advice, and position sizing and risk are your decisions.
Patterns a Darvas Box is mistaken for
- Flat Base
- A flat base only requires a tight range. A Darvas box requires repeated, identifiable rejections at a specific ceiling and floor. The box is the stricter case.
- Consolidation Breakout
- The box names the structure while it forms; consolidation breakout fires on the break. They frequently describe the same stock a few days apart.
- Ascending Triangle
- A Darvas box has a flat floor. An ascending triangle has a rising one. If the lows are stepping up rather than holding a level, it is a triangle.
- Inside Bar
- An inside bar is a single session contained within the prior bar. A box is a multi-week structure. An inside bar can form inside a box, but they are different scales entirely.
Last reviewed . Structure and grading for the Darvas Box are reviewed against the scanner's own rules.