Breakout
craft.
The pattern library: flags, volatility contractions, cups and handles, episodic pivots, opening ranges, and the many ways breakouts fail. Written from a tested, rules-based system rather than chart folklore, with the base rates alongside the textbook pictures.
The Pullback to a Moving Average: a cleaner reference point than chasing the breakout
How the pullback-to-a-moving-average entry works: why rising averages act as dynamic support, the volume signature, and healthy pullback vs breakdown.
Breakout vs Pullback Entry Two doors into the same trend
Breakout vs pullback entries: buying strength at a pivot versus a healthy pullback to support, the confirmation-versus-price tradeoff, and how each one fails.
When to buy a breakout: anticipation vs confirmation. Two clocks, one pivot.
Anticipating a breakout buys a better price and tighter risk but eats false starts; confirming on volume cuts failures at a worse price. The timing tradeoff.
The Opening-Range Breakout: Reading the First Hour
What the opening-range breakout (ORB) is, why the open is informative, the 5/15/30/60-minute window tradeoffs, volume confirmation, and false breaks.
The high-tight flag, the rarest continuation pattern
The high-tight flag: a stock roughly doubles, then holds tight before continuing. The strict criteria, the volume signature, why it is rare, and how it fails.
The episodic pivot. The gap is the announcement.
The episodic pivot (EP) explained: a stock gapping out of a quiet base on an earnings surprise, and why earnings-confirmed gaps run while technical gaps fade.
The Cup-and-Handle Pattern, and How to Read Its Depth
How the cup-and-handle base is defined and read: the rounded cup, the shallow upper-half handle, cup depth, and the tells of a healthy versus faulty base.
How a base tightens before it breaks.
The volatility contraction pattern (VCP), Mark Minervini's tightening base: progressively shallower pullbacks, drying volume, and a coil toward the pivot.
The flag breakout: reading the continuation setup
The flag continuation pattern explained: the pole, the tight low-volume pause, the volume signature, and how a healthy flag differs from one that fails.