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Using Bollinger Bands to Gauge Trends

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User is offline   xysoom 

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Using Bollinger Bands to Gauge Trends



Bollinger Bands® are a type of chart indicator for technical analysis and have become widely used by traders in many markets, including stocks, futures, and currencies. Created by John Bollinger in the 1980s, the bands offer unique insights into price and volatility.To get more news about Bollinger Band, you can visit wikifx.com official website.

In fact, there are a number of uses for Bollinger Bands®, such as determining overbought and oversold levels, as a trend following tool, and for monitoring for breakouts.
Bollinger Bands® are composed of three lines. One of the more common calculations uses a 20-day simple moving average (SMA) for the middle band. The upper band is calculated by taking the middle band and adding twice the daily standard deviation to that amount. The lower band is calculated by taking the middle band minus two times the daily standard deviation.
A common approach when using Bollinger Bands® is to identify overbought or oversold market conditions. When the price of the asset breaks below the lower band of the Bollinger Bands®, prices have perhaps fallen too much and are due to bounce. On the other hand, when price breaks above the upper band, the market is perhaps overbought and due for a pullback.

Using the bands as overbought/oversold indicators relies on the concept of mean reversion of the price. Mean reversion assumes that, if the price deviates substantially from the mean or average, it eventually reverts back to the mean price.

In range-bound markets, mean reversion strategies can work well, as prices travel between the two bands like a bouncing ball. However, Bollinger Bands® don't always give accurate buy and sell signals. During a strong trend, for example, the trader runs the risk of placing trades on the wrong side of the move because the indicator can flash overbought or oversold signals too soon.

To help remedy this, a trader can look at the overall direction of price and then only take trade signals that align the trader with the trend. For example, if the trend is down, only take short positions when the upper band is tagged. The lower band can still be used as an exit if desired, but a new long position is not opened since that would mean going against the trend.
Create Multiple Bands for Greater Insight
As John Bollinger acknowledged, "tags of the bands are just that, tags, not signals."

A tag (or touch) of the upper Bollinger Band® is not in and of itself a sell signal. A tag of the lower Bollinger Band® is not in and of itself a buy signal. Price often can and does "walk the band." In those markets, traders who continuously try to "sell the top" or "buy the bottom" are faced with an excruciating series of stop-outs, or even worse, ever-mounting losses as price moves further and further away from the original entry.

At the core, Bollinger Bands® measure deviation, which is why the indicator can be very helpful in diagnosing trend. By generating two sets of Bollinger Bands®, one set using the parameter of "one standard deviation" and the other using the typical setting of "two standard deviations," we can look at price in a whole new way. We will call this Bollinger Band® "bands."

In the chart below, for example, we see that whenever price holds between the upper Bollinger Bands® +1 SD and +2 SD away from mean, the trend is up; therefore, we can define that channel as the "buy zone." Conversely, if price channels within Bollinger Bands® –1 SD and –2 SD, it is in the "sell zone." Finally, if price meanders between +1 SD band and –1 SD band, it is essentially in a neutral state, and we can say that it's in uncharted territory.
Bollinger Bands® adapt dynamically to price expanding and contracting as volatility increases and decreases. Therefore, the bands naturally widen and narrow in sync with price action, creating a very accurate trending envelope.

A Tool for Trend Traders and Faders
Having established the basic rules for Bollinger Band® "bands," we can now demonstrate how this technical tool can be used by both trend traders who seek to exploit momentum and fade-traders who like to profit from trend exhaustion or reversals. Returning to the chart above, we can see how trend traders would position long once price entered the "buy zone." They would then be able to stay in the trade as the Bollinger Band® "bands" encapsulate most of the price action of the move higher.

As for an exit point, the answer is different for each individual trader, but one reasonable possibility would be to close a long trade if the candle on the candlestick charts turn red and more than 75% of its body were below the "buy zone." Using the 75% rule, at that point, price clearly falls out of trend, but why insist that the candle be red? The reason for the second condition is to prevent the trend trader from being "wiggled out" of a trend by a quick move to the downside that snaps back to the "buy zone" at the end of the trading period.

Note how, in the following chart, the trader is able to stay with the move for most of the uptrend, exiting only when price starts to consolidate at the top of the new range.
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