Swing trading patterns: How to Hedge Your Porfolio: 7 Swing Trading Strategies That Work Updated 2023

Triangle patterns are one of my favorite stock swing trading strategies. While triangles are a common chart pattern, I require very specific criteria to materialize in order for me to take a trade. Bullish and bearish engulfing patternsare some of the most popular candlestick patterns.

Moving averages calculate the mean of a market’s price movements over a given period. In doing so, they smooth out any erratic short-term spikes. If you open a short position at a high, you’ll aim to close it at a low to maximise profit. Likewise, a long trade opened at a low should be closed at a high. For many, the attraction of swing trading is that it can be worked in around a 9 – 5 job and other life commitments.

More cautiously, we can wait for the first candle to close below it. Another horizontal or downward diagonal consolidation then forms the right shoulder before price finally drops away in a new bear move. One of the most popular and reliable of these is the head and shoulders, which indicates a bullish or bearish reversal. There are always pullbacks within trends that offer attractive entry opportunities.

Its broker-dealer subsidiary, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. , offers investment services and products, including Schwab brokerage accounts. Its banking subsidiary, Charles Schwab Bank, SSB , provides deposit and lending services and products. Access to Electronic Services may be limited or unavailable during periods of peak demand, market volatility, systems upgrade, maintenance, or for other reasons. If you have a low risk tolerance, or if you don’t have sufficient risk capital, then you might want to avoid it altogether. Sometimes prices move a lot in a short period; sometimes they stay within a tight range over a long time, underscoring the market’s always-on fluctuations.

Bullish Candlestick Reversal Patterns

With any investing strategy, the overall direction of the market matters. Are things trending up over the past 10 days, or are they trending down? And fortunately for you, VectorVest simplifies this, too.

Swing trading strategies can be aided by using candlestick charts and oscillators to identify potential trades. As a swing trader, the 6 indicators above are going to be your bread and butter. You can use just these technical indicators to execute your trades. And the reality is, looking at these technical indicators can get overwhelming. What if technical analysis could be brain-dead simple?

My Complete Stock Swing Trading Course reveals the whole process of finding explosive stocks to trade, including WHEN to trade this strategy, and when to back off. The stock below broke out from a consolidation a bit above the triangle. The first consolidation was very loose , so it was left alone. The next consolidation was tighter, but ultimately, the price couldn’t hold and broke to the downside. Price moves up again and forms a consolidation in the middle to upper portion of the triangle . If the consolidation is taking up most of the triangle, which is now quite narrow, that is also fine.

They work on daily charts, weekly charts, or any other chart you use to assess a market situation. The stochastic oscillator is another form of momentum indicator, working similarly to the RSI. It compares the closing price of a market to the range of its prices over a given period. IG’s ease of movement indicator offers a closer look at volume by showing you how it relates to price action. Using EOM, you can identify whether market movement is being driven by a comparatively low volume of trades. Some of the most popular swing trading strategies can be invisible in the noise of intra-day charts.

Swing trading can be a means to supplement or enhance a longer-term investment strategy. Swing trading is one of the few ways traders attempt to capture frequent short-term price movements in a market landscape that tends to evolve at a much slower pace. Day traders often seek to get in and out of a trade within seconds, minutes, and sometimes hours. This means they may place multiple trades within a single day. However, it may inform the decision to trade a particular asset. What matters is that we are able to identify clear swing highs and lows, and to plot our entries on subsequent breaks of support and resistance.

The swing trader’s backtesting should indicate which are the optimum periods to use. Like all moving averages, the EMA is an average of the previous candlesticks’ closing price. I know time is limited, so here is a one-page summary of my triangle pattern trading strategy. Investopedia does not provide tax, investment, or financial services and advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Perhaps the most important metric of the three is relative timing .

Bull Pennant Trading Strategy

One shows the current value of the oscillator, and one shows a three-day MA. Anything over 70 is generally thought to be overbought, which can be a sign to open a short position. When the RSI drops beneath 30, meanwhile, it’s generally thought to be in oversold territory. Schwab does not recommend technical analysis as a sole means of investment research.

Here’s an introduction to the top indicators, including moving averages, RSI and volume. How swing trading works, then you know that traders look for trends and patterns to identify opportunities. But how do you find these opportunities and validate them? To accurately identify potential stocks and determine your entry and exit points, you’ll rely on swing trading indicators. And as you have probably begun to realize – there are a lot of different indicators.

The Importance Of Understanding Swing Trading Indicators

When it hits an area of resistance, on the other hand, bears send the market down. This makes them useful spots to identify so you can open and close trades as close to reversals as possible. Support and resistance are areas on a market’s chart that it has difficulty crossing. They form the basis of the majority of technical strategies, and swing trading is no different.

What is swing trading?

Compared to day-trading, swing trading doesn’t require the same screen time however, work has to be done to get the trading system in place. For sure, taking a position home overnight requires a different approach to risk than that of a day trader. Position sizing will reduce while feelings like impatience and frustration can be amplified. As always, these patterns are seldom perfect, and the support and resistance lines may be sloping rather than horizontal. Both patterns consist in essence of two failed attempts to break a level of resistance , or support . So, double tops typically form a pattern resembling a letter M, double bottoms a W.

When a faster MA crosses a slower MA from below, it can be indicative of an impending bull move. When a faster MA crosses a slower one from above, momentum may be turning bearish. Market swings can provide ample opportunities for profit – but to take advantage, you’ll need to know your swing trading indicators.

I will even take trades if the consolidation forms just above the triangle. A doji is a trading session where a security’s open and close prices are virtually equal. It can be used by investors to identify price patterns.