Traps with false breakouts

I have had an observation on 5 min charts where there is a breakout that occurs 3+ minutes countdown into the 5 minute bar that usually results in a false breakout and trap me and going in the other direction.

People do say (and perhaps rightly) that there are many more fakeouts than breakouts.

This theory is the basis of Linda Raschke’s “Turtle Soup” system, which is well worth a look and playing around with, if you’re interested. An online search will find quite a lot, for you.

Also worth looking at “trend” on M15 and H1 charts, if you’re trading from M5 ones: a breakout on an M5 chart which is against the trend of the M15 and H1 charts is so likely to be false that some people have found tradable edges just from that. You need to be very clear, though, about the answer to the question “breakout of exactly what?”.

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I will be modifying slightly my trading strategy by filtering out potential fake outs based on my observation.