Monday, April 16, 2007

Base and Break Pattern Illustrated

We wrote about the Base and Break pattern -- the key intraday set-up to our system-- in our last blog post. Today we wanted to illustrated it from an example from today's trading.

We listed CROX at 54 this weekend on our Forming List (this means that it had a potential trading spot at 54 on the daily chart).

Today it set-up in a very nice base and break pattern 10 cents below the pivot point of 54. We always tell our members that one of the absolute most important elements to becoming a successful trader is to keep your losses small. The base and break pattern by definition has very tight stops. In the following example, one would buy on the break of 53.9 (and the accompanying volume expansion -- remember you want overall high volume PLUS volume expansion at the key breaking point) with a stop at any reversal back into the base -- basically 53.85. This means that most likely you would have filled at 53.92-53.95 and would have had a stop under 10 cents. The target was a 1+% quick trade, meaning that your reward (50 cents +) greatly outweighs your risk (10 cents).