The RedK Chop & Breakout Scout (C&BS or just CBS) is a centered oscillator that helps traders identify when the price is in a chop zone, where it's recommended to avoid trading or exit existing trades - and helps identify (good & tradeable) price breakouts.
i receive many questions asking for simple ways to identify chops .. Here's one way we can do that.
(This is work in progress - i was exploring with the idea, and wasn't sure how interesting other may find it. )
Quick Intro:
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Quick techno piece: This concept is similar to a Stochastic Oscillator - with the main difference being that we're utilizing units of ATR (instead of a channel width) to calculate the main indicator line - which will then lead to a non-restricted oscillator (rather than a +/- 100%) - given that ATR changes with the underlying and the timeframe, among other variables.
to make this easy, and avoid a lot of technical speak in the next part, :) i created (on the top price panel) the same setup that the C&B Scout represents as a lower-panel indicator.
So as you read below, please look back and compare what C&BS is doing in its lower panel, with how the price is behaving on the price chart.
how this works
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- To identify chops and breakouts, we need to first agree on a definition that we will use for these terms.
- for the sake of this exercise, let's agree that the price is in a chop zone, as long as the price is moving within a certain distance from a "price baseline" of choice ( which we can adjust based on the underlying, the volatility, the timeframe, the trading style..etc)
- when the price moves out of that chop zone, we consider this a breakout
- Now not all breakouts are "good" = they need to at least happen in the direction of the longer term trend. In this case, we can apply a long Moving Average to act as a filter - and consider breakouts to be "good" if they are in the same direction as the filter line
- With the above background in mind, we establish a price baseline (as you see on the top panel, this is based on the midline of a Donchian Channel - but we can use other slow moving averages in future versions)
- we will decide how far above/below that baseline is considered to be "chop zone" - we do this in terms of units of Average True Range (ATR) - using ATR here is valuable for so many reasons, most of all, how it adjusts to timeframe and volatility of underlying.
- The C&B Scout line simply calculates how far the price is above/below the baseline in terms of "ATR units". and shows how that value compares to our own definition of a "chop zone"
- so as long as the price is within the chop zone, the CBS line will be inside the shaded area - and when the price "breaks out" of the chop zone, the CBS line will also breakout (or down) from the chop zone.
- C&B Scout will give a visual clue to help take trades in the direction of the prevailing trend - the chop zone is green when the price is in "long mode", as in, the price is above the filter line - and will be red when we are in "short mode" - so the price is below the filter line. in green mode, we should only consider breakouts to the upside, and ignore breakouts to the downside (or breakdowns) - in red mode, we should only consider breakouts to the downside., and ignore the ones to the upside.
- i added some examples of "key actions" on the chart to help explain the approach here further.
Usage & settings Notes:
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- even though for many traders this will be a basic concept/setup, i still highly suggest you spend time getting used to how it works/reacts and adjusting the settings to suit your own trading style, timeframe, tolerance, what you trade....etc
- for example, if i am a conservative trader, i may consider any price movement within 1 x ATR above and below the baseline to be in "chop" (ATR Channel width = 2 x ATR) - and i want to only take trades when the price moves outside of that range *and* in the direction of the prevailing trend
- An aggressive trader may use a smaller ATR-based value, say 0.5 x ATR above/below the baseline, as their chop zone.
- A swing trader may use a shorter filter line and focus on the CBS line crossing the 0 line.
- .... and so on.
- Also note that the "tradeable" signal is when the CBS line "exits" the chop zone (upward on green background, or downward on red background) - however, an aggressive trader may take the crossing of the CBS line with the 0 line as the signal to open a trade.
- As usual please do not use this indicator "in isolation" and ensure you have other confirming signals from your setups before trading.
conclusion
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As i mentioned, this is really a simple concept - and i'm a big fan of those :) -- and there's so much that could be done to expand around it (add more visuals/colors, add alerts, add options for ATR calculation, Filter line calculations, baseline..etc) - but with this v1.0, i wanted to share this initially and see how much interest and how valuable fellow traders find it, before playing any further with it. so please be generous with your comments.