Breakouts - The Route To Profit

Breakouts have always been the way to beat the market. The problem with breakouts are all those lines. Just where do they go? Sometimes they are easy to place -



Sometimes a bit more difficult -



The difficulty comes when the market and the stock are being extremely volatile as we see here in CAR. Most often I don't bother with the "triangles" (oh my - what heresy) and I just do the 63% solution -



I transcribe a line from the top to the last lowest point and take 63% up from the bottom and when the price breaks the 63% line it is usually right at the right place for a continuing breakout.

What happens if you use 50%? In the example shown the price came back up to 50% then dipped back down to past the 25% line and then came back from there. I call this the secondary or echo dip and you could, of course buy it off that dip and be perfectly happy. (Bollinger called this the "head fake" and he insists that all stocks do it before they go up (and most do)). This is also known as the "trader's action zone".

I will take the trade on the echo dip but if I miss it there I will take it after it passes 63% because once it is past 63% it will with the highest probability retrace to 100 and more.