What Are Bollinger Bands?

Armed with the right strategy, you have a much better chance of success in stock trading. But what if there was a way to automate that strategy and take the guesswork out? Using their strategy tester feature, you can backtest Bollinger Bands strategies and other popular indicators to see how they would have performed in the past. An indicator that enables 85% of trades to be winners is rare, which made Bollinger Bands profitable on this stock.

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As John Bollinger describes it himself in his Bollinger Band’s rules, the price can walk the upper or lower band during trending markets, look at the example above. So you could literally see the price moving closely to the line for a long period of time and make the mistake of interpreting it as a Sell Signal. Before Mr. John Bollinger revolutionised the technical analysis world, chartists were using fixed width bands which were not responsive to volatility.

Bollinger Bands ® Pullback Trading

Setting up Bollinger Bands on trading platforms would depend on your broker’s layout. Usually there would be a toolbar where traders can choose between different technical indicators, and Bollinger Bands would appear there. Our test results on 1-minute charts show a low success rate of 23 percent, and a 5-minute chart had a 30 percent success rate. You can develop, fine-tune and test your unique day trading Bollinger Bands strategy by backtesting.

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You can make an entry when you see a STRONG BULLISH candle to the upside, consecutive reversal candles to the upside, or you find a bullish pattern forming. You need to see that the trend is moving upwards, in this case, before you enter a trade. If one band is pointing in one direction (i.e. up) the other band must point in the opposite direction (i.e. https://investmentsanalysis.info/ down) to confirm a swing trading opportunity. If you are looking for something specific you can always head on over to our TSG Blog Articles Page. You can find nearly anything trading-related that you’re interested in. Thomas Yeung is a market analyst and portfolio manager of the Omnia Portfolio, the highest-tier subscription at InvestorPlace.

Traders often succeed by combining Bollinger Bands with other indicators and confirming signals, aiming for a favorable risk/reward ratio. Success depends on the trader’s skill, market understanding, and risk management. There are multiple uses for Bollinger Bands®, including using them for overbought and oversold trade signals. Traders can also add multiple bands, which helps highlight the strength of price moves. These contractions are typically followed by significant price breakouts, ideally on large volume. A trader can visually identify when the price of an asset is consolidating because the upper and lower bands get closer together.

Bollinger Bands Trading Strategies

This way you are not trading the bands blindly but are using the bands to gauge when a stock has gone too far. The key to this strategy is waiting on a test of the mid-line before entering the position. You can increase your likelihood of placing a winning trade if you go in the direction of the primary trend and there is a sizable amount of volatility. Notice how the volume exploded on the breakout and the price began to trend outside of the bands; these can be hugely profitable setups if you give them room to fly. In this post we’ll provide you with a solid foundation on the bands, plus six trading strategies you can test to see which works best for your trading style.

• The importance of Bollinger Bands in the realm of technical analysis and trading cannot be overstated.
• While this specific Bollinger Bands strategy was successful, most configurations failed badly.
• Some of the Bollinger Bands trading strategies include overbought and oversold approach, squeeze strategy and Double Bollinger Bands (DBB).
• Range trading is a trading strategy that involves buying low and selling high within a defined price range.
• When prices reach the upper band, it is considered overbought, and when prices reach the lower band, it is considered oversold.

In the following examples, we’ll demonstrate this strategy’s limitations and what can happen when things do not work out as planned. Yarilet Perez is an experienced multimedia journalist and fact-checker with a Master of Science in Journalism. She has worked in multiple cities covering breaking news, politics, education, and more.

Bollinger Bands only has a 33% success rate across the Dow Jones 30 stocks. Just as a reminder, the middle band is set as a 20-period simple moving average in many charting applications. When the price of an asset is trading near the upper Bollinger Band, it is considered overbought and may indicate that the price is likely to fall. Conversely, when the price is trading near the lower Bollinger Band, it is considered oversold and may indicate that the price is likely to rise. This can provide traders with valuable information on potential trade entries and exits.

If the stock gaps up and then closes near its low and is still entirely outside of the bands, this is often a good indicator that the stock will correct in the near-term. The closing price of each bar is crucial to this strategy, so it’s best to use a Line On Close chart. The upper Bollinger Band represents a value that is two standard deviations above the average (a positive deviation). Conversely, the lower band represents a value that is two standard deviations below the average (a negative deviation). This Bollinger Bands trading strategy relies on the mean reversion of the price. Mean reversion expects that, if the price significantly deviates from the average, it will eventually revert back to the mean price.

Traders should have a clear and disciplined trading plan that dictates when and how to enter and exit positions. Failing to consider the broader market context can be a major mistake. Bollinger Bands should be used in conjunction with an understanding of prevailing market conditions, such as trending, ranging, or volatile markets.

For the upper band, add the standard deviation to the moving average. For the lower band, subtract the standard deviation Bollinger bands strategy from the moving average. Bollinger bands help determine whether prices are high or low on a relative basis.