Читать книгу Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns - Thomas N. Bulkowski - Страница 63

Figure 4.3 shows a failure of a bearish bat pattern. Why is it a failure? As the name implies (bearish bat, not bullish), price should drop after point D (meaning price should trend lower after the pattern ends). However, price continues trending higher in this example. Price closes above the top of the pattern (X) at point E, posting an upward breakout.

I checked the statistics and found that 70% of the 665 bats I looked at break out upward, regardless of the market condition (bull or bear). Don't let that number give you nightmares. As awful as the 70% number is, it doesn't tell the complete story. Swing traders will soon learn (as discussed in Table 4.2) that price turns lower at point D 86% of the time. Price may still break out upward, as Figure 4.3 shows, but maybe you can make money when price drops between D and the breakout.

Figure 4.3 This bearish bat isn't bearish at all.

I don't show this situation in Figure 4.3, but if price does turn lower at D but drops less than or equal to 5%, then that's also a failure. If you were to trade a pattern with a 5% failure, you'd be hard pressed to make money. The 5% failure rate (also called the breakeven failure rate) is 17.7% for this pattern in bull markets (but just 4.5% in bear markets).

Since I'm throwing around a lot of numbers, let's discuss statistics.