Stocks, Forex and Other Money Matters

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 Best Traded Short

The descending triangle does break down more than it breaks up with this occurring in 57% of the patterns. A downside breakout is profitable 45% of the time delivering an average profit of 0.92% in 9 days. A large number of downside breakouts (12.1%) return in excess of 10% gain.

Refine Your Entries

A break to the downside works better in a falling market or sector environment. By using filters that require the market to be in a consolidation or a down trend you can improve the results. The sector should also be in a down trend for the best results. Strangely a sector that is in a down trend at the beginning of the pattern produces better results than a sector in a down trend when the breakout occurs.

Breakouts can occur anywhere along the length of the descending triangle pattern. Another key to picking successful short breakouts from descending 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 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.

Descending Triangles, Profitable When the Markets Is Not

Following a series of simple rules to determine which descending triangle to trade can improve results dramatically. By applying these filters descending triangles are profitable on 48% of the trades and return an average of 2.55% per trade in 10 days. This is a very profitable pattern to trade.

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.

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