How To Trade The Cup And Handle Chart Pattern

They indicate where a previous rally met resistance and where a previous decline met support. The Cup and Handle pattern gives a long entry signal, i.e., a buy, when the price breaks above the resistance formed at the top of the cup. As with any situation where support or resistance is broken, the break out should ideally be accompanied by a significant increase in volume.

He is an expert in trading and technical analysis with more than 25 years of experience in the markets. Alan received his bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and is the author of The Master Swing Trader. A cup and handle is considered a bullish signal extending an uptrend, and it is used to spot opportunities to go long. At the time of the trade, a stop loss is placed below the recent consolidation. When evaluating whether a cup and handle pattern is real, it is important to look at the shapes of both the cup and the handle. The rounded top are reversal patterns used to signal the end of a trend.

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As with most technical analysis patterns, there are guidelines to indicate the strength of the trend. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two largest cryptocurrencies, commanding approximately 60% of crypto’s total market capitalization. If both Bitcoin and Ethereum are in an uptrend, then the chance of a bullish breakout is higher. If both Bitcoin and Ethereum are in a downtrend, then a bullish breakout has a smaller chance of occurring.

There are two variations of Cup and Handle chart patterns in Forex based on their potential. There is the bullish Cup with Handle and the bearish Inverted Cup with Handle. The change in the move is so gradual that the price action creates a rounded bottom on the chart.

If you trade a bullish Cup with Handle pattern, you should place your stop loss order below the lower level of the handle. If you trade a bearish Cup with Handle your stop loss order should be placed above the upper level of the handle. When we get this indication, we can buy or sell the Forex pair depending on the potential of the pattern. The bearish Cup & Handle starts with a bullish price move, which gradually slows down and turns into a bearish move. As we said, the classic cup and handle pattern has its bearish equivalent – the bearish Cup & Handle, which is a mirror image of the standard Cup & Handle.

• You can even adjust your stop loss order right above the upper level of the zone.
• We have discussed many different types of chart patterns to date.
• A complete list of our criteria is provided at the end of this article.
• A profit target is determined by measuring the distance between the bottom of the cup and the pattern’s breakout level and extending that distance upward from the breakout.

During the stock’s actual breakout, you want to see a new wave of buyers coming in at a torrid pace, not a trickling one. The handle should also show a downward slope along at least a portion Promissory Note of its price lows, not an upward one. Theta’s height percentage is calling for this target at the very minimum. RSI and momentum can push this 1hr candle out of the cup resistance.

The Cup portion of the chart pattern is U-shaped and shallow relative to the price trend that preceded it. A version of this column was first published in the July 9, 2010, edition of IBD. Please follow Saito-Chung on Twitter at both @SaitoChung and @IBD_DChung for more on growth stocks, charts, breakouts, sell signals, cup and handle chart and financial markets. Round bottom with a small retracement What you would want to see on a classic cup and handle is a nice round bottom with followed by a slight retracement. Volume breakout After the formation of the cnh, the market will try to make a run, temporarily breaking the horizontal resistance.

You want to see several bullish candles with volume above the 50-period moving average, while most of the bearish candles remain below the moving average. If a large bullish and bearish volume candle are next to each other, you want to see the bullish candle display a higher volume than the bearish candle. Aside from having a clearly defined pattern with specific entry and exit parameters, this chart pattern is a favorite among traders because it is simple to identify. There aren’t a lot of fancy indicators or technical tools needed to spot the pattern. Then, new buyers enter the market as they see the technical setup complete, pushing the market above prior highs. The cup and handle pattern cannot exist without a prior uptrend.

The full pattern is complete when price breaks out of this consolidation in the direction of the cups advance. Let’s consider the market mechanics of a typical cup and handle scenario. A new rallyprints a high, and the price rolls over into a correction, flipping relative strength oscillators into sell cycles that encourage strong-handed longs to exit positions. New buyers enter the pullback at the 38.6% or 50% retracement level, expecting the prior uptrend to resume. The security bounces and tests the high, drawing in aggressive short-sellers who believe that a new downtrend will elicit a double top breakdown. As a general rule, cup and handle patterns are bullish price formations.

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Make sure it doesn’t exceed the cup portion in time or size of decline. A good cup with handle should truly look like the silhouette of a nicely formed tea cup. The handle always shows a smaller decline from high to low; it represents a final shakeout of uncommitted holders, sending those shares into sturdier hands in the market. The reasoning behind this explanation is that the breakout move requires strong volume after the necessary quiet period to form both the cup and the handle. You can’t find a more quite time to trade the markets than late afternoon when everyone is off at lunch or have finished trading for the day.

We’re also a community of traders that support each other on our daily trading journey. A chart pattern is a graphical presentation of price movement by using a series of trend lines or… Determine significant support and resistance levels with the help of pivot points. You can use derivatives such as CFDs or spread bets to trade when you see the cup and handle pattern. With derivatives trading, you don’t own the underlying asset, which means you can go long or short .

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The first one is with the size of the handle and the second with the size of the cup. They are both applied from the moment of the breakout as shown on the image. The cup part of the pattern should be fairly shallow, with a rounded or flat “bottom” (not a V-shaped one), and ideally reach to the same price at the upper end of both sides.

This sows doubt among short-sellers, who become nervous about the failed trend to the downside. As a result, they close out their positions, which adds a little buying pressure to the market, popping the price a little. Venture fund The double bottom is another pattern that repeats in every market cycle. Not surprisingly, double bottoms typically form when the general stock market is showing similarly volatile, roller-coaster behavior.

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Make a purchase only when the price breaks above the top of the triangle of the handle. There is no upper limit with some patterns taking as long as a year. The handle may form over one or two weeks but may also take several Forex platform months. The cup and handle on the Australian All Ordinaries is the largest such Point and Figure pattern that I have encountered, lasting almost 10 years. The cup runs from to and the handle from until the breakout at .

Deconstructing The Cup And Handle

The pricing of the handle remained within the upper portion of the cup, so all of the necessary ingredients were present for a bullish breakout. As noted earlier, these patterns — the cup with handle, double bottom and flat base — repeat themselves in every market cycle. Facebook, Nvidia and Netflix have all flashed these telltale bases multiple times over the years. The daily and weekly charts at both Investors.com and MarketSmith make heavy turnover easy to spot. Simply compare the day or week’s volume with the moving average line drawn across the volume bars.

A Cup and Handle pattern is a bullish continuation pattern that resembles a teacup on a candle chart. The handle part is when the price pullback slightly before roars higher and continues the previous trend. The Cup and Handle pattern can take between 30 to 50 candles to form on any given time resolution. The security finally broke out in July 2014, with the uptrend matching the length of the cup in a perfect measured move. The rally peak established a new high that yielded a pullback retracing 50% of the prior rally, nearly identical to the prior pattern. This time, the cup prints a V-shape rather than a rounded bottom, with price stalling under the prior high.

Ideally, it should be in the upper third of the cup pattern. It should not drop into the lower half of the cup, and ideally, it should stay in the upper third. Price persistence is the tendency of a security’s cost to continue moving in its present direction.

Chart Example Of Cup And Handle

The bullish Cup and Handle pattern is the one we have been discussing so far. It starts with a bearish price move, which gradually reverses. The new bullish move finishes approximately around the top of the prior bearish move. Then the price action begins to create the handle, which is a bearish channel type structure.

Below is another chart, a cup and handle example for Ethereum. If the breakout is successful, then you can consider moving your stop loss to the breakeven level, locking in the trade without experiencing a loss. The risk and stop loss on the trade will be set at the low of the handle. This way, if the breakout fails and falls back below the handle’s low, then you can close out the trade at a small loss and move on to the next opportunity. The cup and handle pattern is an effective combination to flush out weak holders.

However, crypto trading takes place on many different exchanges — and even off the exchange. Therefore, arriving at an accurate volume figure is extremely difficult. This moving average indicates the average volume for the last 50 periods.

Author: Lorie Konish