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Breakouts

Why I do not like breakouts (even if they are great)As you can see on this chart there were a couple of great breakouts, that went straight in the right direction. We also know that trying to catch tops & bottoms is a noob trap, with all the really ungifted new traders that are 95% certain to fail & quit obssessed with catching bottoms (go check the Bitcoin bull community they have a new bottom every 3 months). So why don't I like breakouts that much? Here is my list of reasons: 1- Even after a couple of years, I prefer to stick to 1 group of strategies and really perfect them, become a sniper, rather than chase opportunities all the time and risk going insane (meaning overtrading). That's definitely happening, a way or another. 2- The majority of us that do not work at citadel etc, are competing against traders with a big information and speed edge. Not only are there directly connected to the exchange and can execute faster than lightning while your order goes throught the internet, but they also have access to alot of the order flow (for forex banks legally simply just have it, and for stocks you got brokers selling their retail clients order flow in exchange for "free" commissions. Not sure about CME futures, might be the only ones "safe"). Your competition will KNOW FOR A FACT there is a breakout long before you. You might be able to set an order with your broker to buy a breakout but it's going to get executed like a turtle far after hft firms and other people using unfair advantages. When you enter on a bottom if it break below you are out and don't have to worry, but in this case, winners have this tendency to go your way very quickly and you have to react fast. And of course your orders have to be set in advance no other way no one can be fast enough. With a rounded bottom accumulation type, you have plenty of time... Feels like a race, with a big disadvantage. 3- Which brings us to step 3. You will get scammed all the time. Currency markets are curious, they love to go test levels before continuing in a trend. Unless you want to have very wide stops and a bad reward to risk, the market will stop you out over and over and over and over and over before going in your direction. I can just look at any chart and see it all over. Rather than whine about what a scam this is, why not simply take the opposite side? If the price breaks, then you place an order very far away in case it pumps like this... As close as free money we can make it without straight up profiting of a bug with a broker. 4- If you buy bottoms with the price pumping your way you are likely to experience POSITIVE slippage, with breakouts (in particular with cotadel front running you) you are likely to experience NEGATIVE slippage. 5- You will never get the whole meat of the move (but if you go for pullbacks and bottoms, you might) Not a very important point because in practice you're not drowning in profits from giant winners with buying bottoms, but nonetheless... 6- I think it puts you in the wrong mindset, you can easilly find yourself chasing the market over and over, the strategy is literally buying into FOMO as fast as possible. Whereas if you wait for a pullback, for weeks, unless you lose patience and do something dumb, you are not going to be chasing anything but accepting what the market is going to give you. So to sum up the main reasons for me are: - I don't like the concept of buying into FOMO as fast as possible - I don't want massive slippage - I don't want to get scammed over and over with the price going against me in a minute, and my way the next
Education
by MrRenev
Supports and Resistances : Everything You Need to KnowSupports and resistances are horizontal lines on the edges (borders) of congestion areas. The bottom line is the support: the level where buyers strength overcome sellers, and buys are strong enough to reverse the downtrend. The top line is called the resistance: level where sellers strengh overcome buyers, and sells are strong enough to reverse the uptrend. It is more preferable to create your support and resistance lines along congestion area's borders than extreme price action, since these borders illustrate the point where most traders changed their mind, whereas the extremes are only reflecting a few people panicking. Psychology Traders remember at which price they bought or sold, and this is what create supports and resistances. Support and resistance zones often switch roles: when a support is broken it will become a resistance, and vice versa. This happens because as the market makes a breakout downwards, buyers feel pain and wait for a rally to free themselves without cost, whereas sellers regret and wait for a rally to have a second chance to short. The buyer's pain and seller's regret create the new resistance. A support or resistance is going to be more significant if the preciding price action was steep rather than a slow ascending or descending trend. Volumes Low volumes around a resistance or support area indicates its fragility. Traders aren't feeling quite involved in it. However huge volumes show strength in this level. Trading Rules 1. When you are surfing a trend that is reaching its support or resistance, move your protection stop closer. The trend will reveal its health at this point: it can either go faster and your stop isn't triggered or it can bounce on the Trend line and your stop securises your profits. 2. Supports and Resistances are stronger on a bigger timeframe. Weekly charts are stronger than daily charts. This way, if on the weekly the price is flat and on the daily the price action is hitting a support or resistance then the signal is less important than if price was reaching a support or resistance on the weekly. 3. Resistance and support levels are usefull to setup stoplosses and take-profits orders. If you are buying, the lowest value in a support area can be used as a stop if you place it just underneath. Breakouts A breakout happens when the price breaks out of its trading range, but most of breakouts are fake breakouts. Be careful of fakeouts : it is more often an opportunity to position against them, with a protection stop. "Fakeouts" or "fadeouts" are when the price tries to break a support or resistance but end up returning in its trading range. How to know when a breakout is fake or not? True breakouts are confirmed by high volumes and technical indicators showing new highs or new low. Also we should be able to see the new trend on a higher timeframe. Fake breakouts tend to happen on low volumes and indicators divergences. In order to trade fadeouts, wait for price action to stop making new highs or lows. This is when prices fade. Then, place your stop on the extreme, risk is low, but chances are that price will make a pullback in its congestion zone. You liked this article? Make sure to leave like or a comment :) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My Website - Automated Strategies with Backtest and Alert Setup blockchainfiesta.com PineScript Development, Reverse Engineering Comissions open (1 slot)
Education
by cyatophilum
3
Lesson 6A - Breakout Patterns - Falling Wedge (Bullish)Welcome back to Lesson 6 traders. I have something interesting for y'all in this lesson. This lesson is going to be a series on Breakout Patterns. I will be posting one breakout pattern at a time, so it is easy to understand, and clean enough to follow. The following lessons are going to be posted in lesser time. So in the Lesson 6 series, since there will be multiple topics for breakout patterns, I will be splitting them into Lesson 6A, 6B, 6C and so on.... In Lesson 6A, we will be going over the Falling Wedge breakout pattern. We will be looking over the criteria to qualify for this pattern, and what to look for in order to get a breakout confirmation. Falling Wedge is usually a bullish pattern most of the time. It usually is wide from the top and contracts as it moves down to the lower price levels. There are certain criteria for a falling wedge to qualify to be a reversal or a breakout pattern. Lets follow the chart above in order to get a good understanding of what I am taking about here. Actually I will post the above chart right here for you so it can be easier for you: So in the chart above we can clearly see TWO falling wedges, they both are for the same breakout that happened in TRX, so you can refer to any of them. We will go over the step again as a summary, but let us first go over the detail so you get a clear view on this. Whenever I am looking for a falling wedge patterns, I make sure the resistance line, which is the upper line of the falling wedge connects minimum of 3 candle sticks. Sometimes we can get away with 2 candle sticks, but when we have 3 connected candle sticks, meaning the price has pulled back after touching the resistance line at least 3 times, we can check off one of the criteria for a falling wedge. Now for the support line, which is the lower line of the falling wedge should at least have a minimum of 2 candle sticks touching the line, meaning the price has bounce at least 2 times after touching the support (lower) line of the falling wedge. This is considered the second criteria for the falling wedge. This just means that you have a close to accurate enough data to consider this as a reversal pattern for the selected time frame you are into. If we look closely at the chart, for the resistance line, the price has pulled back after touching it about 4 times, and 3 times for the blue support line. Notice how the price candles have not closed outside of the resistance or the support line. This is really important for a valid pattern. Since we have BTC movement effecting the altcoin prices, we can ignore the candles closing just a little outside the resistance/support lines, but mostly the price should be moving inside the wedge. Another criteria for a falling wedge is that, it starts out wide, and the wedge contracts as seen in the chart, as the price moves lower. Once we have these three criteria lined up, we have a confirmation that the price pattern is currently moving in a falling wedge. So now, all we need to do is wait for the breakout. Remember, this is very very important. In order to confirm this reversal, the price must breakout from the falling wedge to the upwards. If it breaks towards the bottom (support line), this pattern gets invalid. As we see in the chart above, the candle breaks out of the falling wedge, and the price start moving rapidly upwards. Thus, we can say that the falling wedge on the chart above is a valid falling wedge pattern. You must have understood this pattern by now. Make sure you do by reading what I have written above, and looking at the chart at the same time. Continue reading below......
Education
by MoneyChartz
7