What is a fractal?

Recently, the term "Forex fractals" has been tightly accepted by traders. Everyone has been talking about it since 2001 after the publication "Trading Chaos". In this book, the author presented his vision of trading fractal (Charles Doe was the first to introduce this term, but he made it clear to a narrow circle of mathematicians). The availability of explanation and efficiency made it possible for most traders to use them.

Fractals are used in technical analysis to build forecasts of price behavior (rise or fall) in the currency market. In a simpler and clearer form, fractals are geometric shapes, similar to each other, consisting of their copies. 

Fractals in the currency market are not fully mathematical figures. Initially, Charles Dow started to use fractals with technical analysis (graphically expressed price behavior figures on the chart are similar to each other). 

Fractals are shapes consisting of five or more candlesticks or bars, the average of which has the highest or lowest value (for upward and downward charts respectively). Such shapes appear at any time frames (from five minutes to the D1, and so on). Fractals allow confirming the continuation or reversal of the current trend.