FAP Turbo

Make Over 90% Winning Trades Now!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Trading Strategy - Ascending Triangles Downside Breakout

By Jeff Cartridge

Ascending triangles have been very popular with traders on the long side and are not so often traded when it breaks in the downward direction. An ascending triangle is defined by two lines, one on the upper boundary of the price movement which is horizontal and one on the lower side which slopes up.

Ascending Triangles, Not Usually Traded Short

Most ascending triangles would be expected to break up and most of the time this is true, but 36% break out to the downside making it possible to trade on the short side. Just 44% of these breakouts are profitable and on average the profit per trade is only 0.31% over a period of 9 days. The ascending triangle is not one of the best chart patterns when it breaks to the downside, but applying some filters can make this pattern more attractive to trade.

Improve Your Trades

As you would expect a break to the downside works better in a falling market environment, but the best trades actually occur at market turning points. By using filters that require the market and the stock to be in a consolidation or an up trend, while the sector is in a consolidation or a down trend, you can improve the results.

Avoid ascending triangle trades that break down at the start of the pattern, but it is ok to let the trade go all the way to the point of the ascending triangle before breaking out. Another key to picking successful short breakouts from ascending triangles is to look for a turning point up from the lower boundary that fails to reach the upper boundary and then falls away.

If volume supports an ascending triangle breakout then the profitability of the trades improves. For volume to support the breakout, volume when the stock is going down should be greater than volume when the stock is going up.

Ascending Triangles Can Be Profitable

Incorporating these simple changes when selecting ascending triangles to trade short, dramatically improves the results. With an average return per trade of 1.07% in 10 days and a hit rate of 52% it is possible for ascending triangles to be traded short successfully.

Note: Statistics for this article have been provided by Patterns Trader after analyzing over 60,000 chart patterns on the Australian market from 2000 - 2008. - 23162

About the Author:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home