7 Ways To Spot Potential Breakout Stocks

Traders who bought the stock at $900 were in for a big surprise when the stock crashed from $900 to $350 due to the Coronavirus before it recovered again. Well that’s another example of a successful retest following a breakout, confirming its old resistance is now new support. Again, this pullback offered a more attractive entry point than the initial breakout.

Some instruments have short term trends while other instruments have long term trends. These trends could also change over time as well so it does not make sense to use a static look back period over the entire history. Even if a stock appears strong, remember that everything is relative. To evaluate a stock, it’s important to compare it to its sector or peers and ensure it is strong compared with other alternatives. Breakout stocks typically outperform the market and their sector, indicating the potential for further growth. The relative strength index is a commonly used technical indicator for gauging the strength of a stock relative to its peers.

Swing Trading Strategies

Some traders refer to these as “pennants” instead of triangles. Expand your business knowledge with the 2023 Total MBA Training in One Box, taught by Chris Haroun, and now at the best price online for a limited time. IG International Limited is licensed to conduct investment business and digital asset business by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Stay on top of upcoming market-moving events with our customisable economic calendar. Auto Trader stock consolidated between 300 and 425 from 2016 to 2019 before breaking out above 600 last year. Expert market commentary delivered right to your inbox, for free.

These tools will stop your trades when the trades reach pre-determined levels and protect you from major drawdowns. First, you need to wait for a few days to confirm whether what has happened is a real breakout. While doing this may seem like a counterproductive thing to do, the reality is that it will see you avoid losing money through a false breakout. Similarly, the upper false breakouts happened because there were no enough bulls to continue pushing the price higher. However, at times, after the breakout, the price tends to reverse.

Plus, there have been some pretty glorious bounces that have led to some timely gains. Discover the range of markets and learn how they work – with IG Academy’s online course. Melrose Industries was stuck between 43 and 61 for almost four years from the middle of 2012 to 2016. Its subsequent breakout was spectacular, moving above 150 by the end of 2016 and up above 220 in 2017.

Typically, stocks that break out beyond their resistance levels often come back down shortly after. This is one reason why it’s important not to drag your feet when it comes to exiting the position. When that time comes, be sure to move on and look for your next opportunity. A stock that surpasses its support or resistance level is considered a breakout stock. These levels represent the price points that the stock has struggled to move beyond during a specific period.

One way to identify potential breakout stocks is by looking for those with increasing volume and price momentum. Breakout stocks often have a sudden surge in trading volume, which may indicate growing investor interest. A stock market breakout or a breakout in a specific share is a tradable event that some active investors can base an entire strategy around. A breakout is when a stock or stock index moves beyond a level of support and resistance​​ that it has struggled to move above or below in the past. Learning how to identify and trade potential breakout stocks gives traders one more tool that they can use to generate profits within an often-volatile market.

You should consider whether you understand how spread bets and CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. Besides helping traders find actionable information from data, he is an avid fan of hockey, golf and fishing. Essentially, the presence of a reason that supports the price action.

When headfakes occur on heavy volume, it may lead to a false breakout, which has more dire consequences. When a stock fails a breakout attempt, it results in a wiggle or a headfake. This results in a pullback again towards the support level where it may bounce again. Charting tools and indicators can be used to visually track and monitor breakouts.

A Simple Way to Scan for Breakout Candidates Using Python

The truth is, that breakout stocks come in all shapes and sizes. In other words, there isn’t a blanket definition that applies to all of them. Reckitt Benckiser shares dropped below 6000 in February 2018, moving into a channel between 5200 and 5900 for the next few months.

• This is a problem because different instruments have different trends.
• I love their optimism but it would take less than a few years before they burn through everything they are building.
• When the stock reaches $900, both the RSI and MACD indicators are showing weakness which is a signal to sell the stock.

IBD identifies these as proper bases, which give the stock a clear price at which to buy shares. Follow this step-by-step guide to learn how to scan for hot stocks on the move. Many traders make the mistake of buying oversold stocks or selling overbought stocks and suffer financial losses as a result. This often happens when traders are unaware of the proper analytical tool to use. If you want to learn how to find breakout stocks on social media, pick a few huge influencers and follow their picks.

Example #1: Creating a Consolidation Watchlist

Firstly, that this was a new https://forex-world.net/ line, and secondly, that the breakout had legs. Therefore, this would have presented a good buying opportunity. In the image below, you can see how Netflix came up on a “High Volume Movers” scan in Trade Ideas – alerting me to a pretty significant breakout. Moreover, this breakout was accompanied by a high relative volume of 15.64, which provided further impetus to the move. Some traders like to anticipate a breakout and get in before it happens, while others prefer to exercise patience and wait for the breakout to occur first.

• VWAP, or Volume Weighted Average Price, is a technical analysis tool used to measure the average price a security trades at during…
• However, there is also a belief that transparency is fully recognized once a stock makes the 52-week high list and profit taking is just around the corner.
• But if you stay on top of trending topics you can hopefully find stocks that are emerging and getting close to passing their resistance level.
• They cannot be considered as scientific or consistent because they do not possess repeatable methodologies and data points.

A potential breakout stock is experiencing low volatility and features low price movement. Such a stock is likely to break out when high volatility returns to the market. Favourable Trading Conditions –Trade breakout stocks with low spreads, unrestricted short selling, transparent prices, and fast trade execution.

Breakout Stocks

However, identifying breakout stocks that will perform well in the future can be challenging. To spot potential winners, a combination of analysis and intuition is necessary. Here are seven ways to identify and profit from potential breakout stocks. We qualify breakout stocks when today’s price has crossed above the latest 5-day trading range by at least one standard deviation. Standard deviation is a measurement of volatility and price movement.

When a breakout occurs, the role of the corresponding support or resistance level reverses. If a stock breaks through a resistance level, then it is likely to make a sustained move upwards. However, if it breaks through a support level, it will likely keep falling. This information has been prepared by IG, a trading name of IG Markets Limited. IG accepts no responsibility for any use that may be made of these comments and for any consequences that result.

The main difference is that this scan looks only at stocks that very recently were making a steady directional movement on momentum. These stocks are excellent candidates for a breakout, since short consolidation periods before the broader trend continues are very common. At the same time, you can spot a breakout above that base when the stock sets a new high. However, a new high alone doesn’t confirm that a breakout is happening or that it’s likely to succeed.

The WRONG way to trade breakout — you must avoid at all cost

These stocks show up on television tickers, online newswire services and intra-day stock scanners. Traders are more likely to pay attention to these rather than investors. These stocks are almost assured to have momentum, volume and liquidity and should be carefully followed for trading opportunities. Other reasons can be an unusual call or put option volume in comparison to the stock’s normal volume or heavy insider buying or selling.

These are just some of the ways you can profit from breakout stocks that are set to break past their resistance lines. When the price is making large movements, the bands will be wide apart. Quiet periods are often followed by larger price movements and a subsequent breakout. In the Alibaba stock chart below, we can see that Alibaba shares showed this pattern before doubling in price over the next year.

The bands are placed a specified number of standard deviations away from the 20-period moving average, which can be adjusted. When trading breakouts, it is important to consider the underlying stock’s support and resistance levels. The more times a stock price has touched these areas, the more valid these levels are and the more important they become. At the same time, the longer these support and resistance levels have been in play, the better the outcome when the stock price finally breaks out. The first step in trading breakouts is to identify current price trend patterns along with support and resistance levels in order to plan possible entry and exit points. The trick to trading breakouts is that finding a potential breakout before it happens requires looking at a number of different technical signals.

When the price moves above the upper trendline of the cup, traders may consider buying. Flat bases are unique because the stock moves sideways for weeks. A flat base will often form after a stock successfully breaks out from a cup or other type of base. From there, the stock will then stall for a period of time, and this price action is what forms the flat base. When scanning for a break above a base, we’re primarily looking for longer-term consolidation than what you’d find simply by scanning for short-term range-bound trading.

This environment of high demand can see the stock’s price leap and potentially lead to a sustained new trend. Many chartists stop at this point, using only the uptrend and consolidation clauses in their scans. This allows them to scan for stocks that are currently consolidating, save those scan results to a ChartList and monitor them for future breakouts. The first step to identifying a consolidation breakout is to establish that the stock has been trading in a narrow range. A failed break occurs when a price moves through an identified level of support or resistance but does not have enough momentum to maintain its direction.

This is because, during the How to find stocks about to breakout opening, it might be difficult to ascertain that prevailing prices will hold during the active trading hours. But towards the market close, the prices probably represent the consensus of market participants. The breakup parameter of 20 days is the same as the breakdown parameter of 20 days.

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As such, identifying false breakouts can limit your overall risk exposure. A breakout pattern fails when the initial support and resistance levels again contain the price. For instance, the breakout becomes invalid if a resistance level is broken, but the price falls below it. Therefore, the key to determining a breakout stock is a market that is in a period of consolidation. It is a stock characterized by low volatility and will be contained by defined support and resistance levels. It can be contained in channels or even candlestick patterns, such as triangles, flags and wedges.