Trading Strategy – Rectangles Downside Breakout

Rectangles have been very popular with traders over the years trading the chart pattern when it breaks out in either direction. A rectangle is defined by two lines, one on the upper boundary of the price movement and one on the lower boundary, both of which are horizontal. The lines are parallel. These can be referred to as consolidations or channels, or the well known Darvas Box, used by Nicolas Darvas to make $2 million in the markets.

Rectangles, Not Usually Traded Short

Rectangles are definitely not one of the most predictable patterns that are available to trade short. With just 46% of the patterns breaking down rectangles also don’t deliver good returns when they do. The average gain is negative, -0.03% in 10 days with less than half of the breakouts (42%) being profitable. These results aren’t great, but selecting the right conditions can make trading rectangles better.

Improve Your Trades

Short breakouts from rectangles work better in very specific market conditions. The market should be in an up trend or consolidating. The sector should not be in a consolidation, but the stock should be consolidating for the best results when trading rectangles short.

Another key to picking successful short breakouts from rectangles is to ignore patterns formed by an outside day candle prior to the breakout. Also avoid patterns that have higher highs or equal closes prior to the breakout.

Ensure that the volume is supportive of the breakout, i.e. volume as the stock falls is greater than volume as the stock rises.

Rectangles Profitable on the Short Side as Well

When trading rectangles short these filters are very important to get good results, making this an extremely difficult pattern to trade short. With these filters in place, an average return per trade of 1.07% in 13 days and a hit rate of 63%. There are better patterns to trade short.

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.

Jeff Cartridge is a private trader and created the website LearnCFDs.com Discover Patterns of Success