3 / 6 · 5 min
Continuation kinds: breakout, retest, trend update and structure break
Four kinds that say «the move continues» or «the move has changed». Each has its own thresholds — and the differences between them matter more than the similarity.
This lesson covers the four direction-bound kinds. Level breakout and retest are a pair of «event and its check»: first price leaves the level behind, then comes back to re-examine it. Trend update and structure break are a pair about the trend itself: the first says «structure intact, the move continued», the second — «structure broken, a reversal is possible». All four fire only at bar close: until the bar closes, there is no event.
Thresholds, verbatim from the detector
- Level breakout: a close beyond the level by more than the tolerance (¼ NATR), the previous bar still on the near side, bar volume ≥ 1.5× the median of the last twenty. Without the volume threshold there would be three times more breakouts — nearly all of them empty.
- Level retest: a swing was broken with volume 2–24 bars ago, price returned to it FROM THE NEW side, the wick reached the level, the close held in the far half of the bar. A retest means «the level changed roles»: former resistance is being tested as support.
- Trend update (bos): a close beyond the last swing high in an uptrend (or swing low in a downtrend) by at least a quarter of a typical bar. A move with the trend, structure intact.
- Structure break (choch): a close beyond the last swing AGAINST the current trend — an uptrend broken by a new low, a downtrend by a new high. The first formal sign of a reversal — but only a sign.
A breakout and its retest on one coin
Monday, a coin near 2.400, NATR 1.5% (typical bar 0.036). Hour #1: close 2.447 against a level of 2.410 — above the level by 0.037, beyond the 0.009 tolerance, volume ×1.9: an upward breakout is recorded. Hours #2–4: price climbs to 2.51, then pulls back. Hour #7: a wick down to 2.412 — touched the former level; close 2.462 — in the upper half of the bar, far from the level: a retest is recorded, direction up. The classic «break — re-check — go» sequence: in the feed it looks like two cards of one coin six hours apart.
bos vs choch: why their difference is the money difference
A trend update happens WITH the move, a structure break AGAINST it. Mixing them up means confusing «continuation» with «reversal» — opposite trades. And a structure break by itself guarantees no reversal: on five-minute stats price follows the break with only a small edge. A break is permission to START looking for a reversal trade (on a retest, on a sweep) — not a command to open one. Whoever enters on the break itself trades the noisiest moment of the market.
Chasing a breakout half a bar after the event
The breakout card appears at bar CLOSE — by which time price is already beyond the level by more than the tolerance, often by half a bar or more. Entering «at market, because breakout» buys the worst price of the move: the stop back beyond the level is far, and half of all breakouts, as the statistics honestly show, do not hold. The grown-up options: wait for the retest (its statistics are better too), or take only breakouts confirmed by higher-timeframe context — and always with a stop beyond the level, never «by eye».
In the feed, select the «Level retest» kind and the 1h · 4h timeframes. For every card, find in the mini chart's history the breakout this retest is re-checking: it happened 2–24 bars earlier. If you cannot see it, you have hit the mini chart's window edge — open the big chart from the card.
Feed: retests on higher TFsA bar closed beyond the level by more than the tolerance, but volume was exactly the median (×1.0). Will there be a breakout card?
No. The volume threshold is one and a half medians of the last twenty bars: a breakout without volume is most often a thin market stretching to the stops, not a move with money behind it. The detector skips such an event silently. This is one of the main reasons the feed shows fewer breakouts than the eye sees on the chart.
How does a retest differ from a bounce off the same level before the breakout?
By the side of approach. Before the breakout, price approaches resistance FROM BELOW and gets rejected downwards — that is a bounce, the level still in its old role. A retest happens AFTER the breakout: price returns to the level FROM THE NEW side (from above, to former resistance) and holds — the level has changed roles. For a retest the detector requires the fact of a recent breakout with volume — without it there is simply no event.