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Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Trading Strategy - Descending Triangles Downside Breakout

By Jeff Cartridge

The descending triangle is the most profitable chart pattern when trading short. The descending triangle is formed with the lower boundary of the price movement contained by a line close to horizontal and the top line slopes down toward the bottom line.

Descending Triangles Profitable, No Surprise

Most descending triangles would be expected to break down and in fact 57%, break out to the downside making this pattern best when traded on the short side. 45% of these breakouts are profitable and on average the profit per trade is 0.92% over a period of 9 days. A good proportion, 12.1% of these breakouts make a profit of 10% or more. The descending triangle is one of the best chart patterns when it breaks to the downside and applying some filters makes this pattern even more attractive to trade.

Refine Your Entries

Short breakouts work better in falling markets which is clear from the results that were achieved in 2002 and 2008, so the market should be falling or consolidating. The best results are achieved trading descending triangles when the sector is falling. For some reason the trend of the sector at the start of the pattern is more important than the trend of the sector prior to the breakout.

Descending triangles that breakout early in the pattern, produce similar results to those that breakout later, so this is not an important filter to use. The best results are achieved when the stock climbs up from the lower boundary and collapses back before reaching the upper boundary of the pattern.

If volume supports a descending 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.

Trading Descending Triangles Can Be Profitable

Incorporating these simple changes when selecting descending triangles to trade short, dramatically improves the results. With an average return per trade of 2.55% in 10 days and a hit rate of 48% descending triangles are one of the most profitable patterns to trade on the short side.

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. - 16931

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