Gap Fill Reversal
A gap fill occurs when price returns to the level of an earlier gap, trading through the vacuum left behind. Because the gap zone contains no prior trading, it often acts as support or resistance when revisited, and a reversal from a filled gap is a common setup.
- Bias
- Bullish
- Category
- Gaps & Islands
- Scan cadence
- Every close
What has to be true for a Gap Fill Reversal to trigger
- An identifiable prior gap
- Price returning to that zone
- A reversal from the gap zone rather than a clean break through it
How PatternGrade grades it
A better-defined original gap and a cleaner reversal from the zone raise the grade.
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 Gap Fill Reversal looks like in practice
Three weeks earlier a stock gapped from $44.80 up to $47.20, leaving an untraded zone. It ran to $53, then pulled back, and today it traded down into $45.10, inside the old gap, before closing at $46.60. Volume on the fill day is above average and the session closes near its high, with the low of the day sitting just inside the bottom of the original gap.
How a Gap Fill Reversal fails
Price keeps going straight through. A gap is a zone with no established support inside it precisely because nobody traded there, so the argument that it should act as support is weaker than it first appears. Once price passes fully through the gap and closes below it, the level has no remaining significance and the pattern is simply wrong.
What this pattern is telling you
Filling a gap is descriptive, not predictive. Whether the fill acts as support depends on the context that created the gap.
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 Gap Fill Reversal 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.
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Gap Fill Reversal FAQ
What is a gap fill?
Price returning to trade through the range left empty by an earlier gap. The zone often acts as support or resistance when revisited.
Why would an old gap act as support?
The usual argument is that buyers who missed the original move place orders in the gap zone, and that the gap's lower edge marks the last price at which the stock traded before the move. It is a real behavioural effect but a weak one, since there is no accumulated volume inside a gap to create genuine support.
What is the difference between filling a gap and reversing at one?
Filling means price returned to the gap zone. Reversing means it returned, found buyers, and turned back up. The first is a description of where price went; the second is the setup. PatternGrade looks for the reversal, not merely the fill.
How long after a gap is a fill still meaningful?
The more time that passes, the weaker the reference. By six months the market has largely repriced around other levels. Fills within a few weeks of the original gap carry the most information, and PatternGrade weights recency.
Is gap fill reversal bullish or bearish?
Bullish. PatternGrade scans the case where price falls back into a prior up-gap and holds. The same caution applies to any gap: it is a vacuum, not a level with trading history behind it.
Patterns a Gap Fill Reversal is mistaken for
- Gap Up
- Gap up fires when the gap is created. This fires when price returns to it, often weeks later.
- Pullback to SMA
- A moving-average pullback is defined by a calculated line. This is defined by a historical price vacuum. Both are retrace-into-support ideas at different references.
- Island Reversal
- An island requires two opposing gaps stranding bars between them. This pattern involves returning to a single earlier gap.
Last reviewed . Structure and grading for the Gap Fill Reversal are reviewed against the scanner's own rules.