The cup and handle pattern is called so because of its appearance. The chart below shows how a cup and handle pattern look like. The pattern is partially defined by this final return to growth. If the cup is followed by long-term stability in the asset’s price, then this is considered a revaluation or momentary dip rather than a trading pattern. The cup-and-handle is defined by the short-term dip in an otherwise long-term pattern of growth.

Free Stock Buying Webinar Go beyond breakouts and learn about 4 buy signals for early entries and adding on. Try to limit your picks to cups that are no more than 30% or 33% deep, except for those built during a bear market. In that case, an exceptional growth stock can fall 40%, 50% or more and still make a successful breakout. If there is no handle, then the cup itself must stretch a minimum six weeks. You need to know if that cup with handle is as it should be, or if it has flaws. The cup can be spread out from 1 to 6 months, occasionally longer.

How To Enter And Exit This Powerful Pattern

You could wait for the price to break above the handle to signal that the uptrend is continuing. A Cup and Handle can be used as an entry pattern for the continuation of an established bullish trend. The cup has a soft U-shape, retraces the prior move for about ⅓ and looks like a bowl. After forming the cup, price pulls back to about ⅓ of the cups advance, forming the handle. The full pattern is complete when price breaks out of this consolidation in the direction of the cups advance.

• The rally peak established a new high that yielded a pullback retracing 50% of the prior rally, nearly identical to the prior pattern.
• This may take the shape of a bowl or a rounding bottom but should not be a V-shape as it should form a consolidation area or a significant support area.
• If the stop-loss is below the half-way point of the cup, avoid the trade.
• Let’s get a little bit deeper into what Cup and Handle is, and how to make money trading with the profitable cup and handle trading strategy.

He is the most followed trader in Singapore with more than 100,000 traders reading his blog every month… Check out this step-by-step guide to learn how to scan for the best momentum stocks every day with Scanz. We always recommend you to backtest first the pattern and trade it a few times on a demo until you’re comfortable and have a good understanding of what is Cup and Handle pattern. You are simply projecting the same distance in price to the upside using as a starting point the initial Cup peak. First buy entry on the Handle breakout, the upper line that defines the Handle structure is our trigger line of the first buy order. The rounded bottom really shows the buyers are in control and thus new highs should be expected.

How To Find Low Float Stocks

A stop-loss can be placed below the low price point in the handle. Once the cup is completed, the handle will begin to develop. These trend lines should have a slight downward slant to them. The important trend line is the resistance trend line, which is the top line. If prices break above resistance on rising volume, then the market will likely continue its trend higher.

I would now like to share some of our key findings during the development of the algorithm. The handle should not drop into the lower half of the cup, and ideally, it should stay in the upper third. China stocks had a tough week as many of the largest internet companies were hammered with bad news revealed in… At that point, it makes sense to exit the stock, even if the 7%-8% loss-cutting sell rule has not yet been triggered.

Due to the rounded bottom of the pattern, you should use a curved drawing tool. If you’re not ready to start straight away, you can practise your trades on a risk-free demo account. Starting from point A, go back in time to find point B where priceB is around priceA. Let C is the lowest price in range , we then superimpose a 5×5 matrix using A, B, and C as milestones. You can add text to any line you draw on your chart and manage its color, orientation, and font size from one tab. This applies to all lines including horizontal lines, trend lines, arrows, and vertical lines.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Cup And Handle Pattern

The price will likely continue in that direction though conservative traders may look for additional confirmation. The target can be estimated using the technique of measuring the distance from the right peak of the cup to the bottom of the cup and extending it in the direction of the breakout. A common stop level is just outside the handle on the opposite side of the breakout.

When you confirm the pattern, the price is likely to break the channel of the handle, initiating a bullish move. The first target equals the size of the channel during the handle. The second target equals to the size of the cup starting from the moment of the breakout. 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.

How To Identify The Cup And Handle Pattern

Additionally, the handle needs to stay in the upper half of the cup and not drop into the lower half of the cup’s price range. For example, if the cup forms between a price range of $1.0 to $2.0, then the handle needs to form within $1.50 to $2.0. If the handle pushes too low, then it will be ineffective at trapping short sellers. The cup and handle pattern starts with an uptrend, followed by a 30–50% correction. Use the Fibonacci retracement tool to measure out the previous uptrend, then look for the correction to retrace near the 30–50% zone. One of the characteristics of the cup and handle pattern is that the handle must form within 10% of the old high.

At that level, traders who bought the stock near the previous highs are likely to sell, causing a gentle pullback. This pullback is then met with bullish activity, which causes the rounded bottom and rise of the new york stock exchange right side of the cup. As the stock once again tests its highs, another pullback – the handle – is observed, but this time bullish investors are able to push the stock higher as they snap up discounted shares.

What Is The Cup

Those that like them see the V-bottom as a sharp reversal of the downtrend, which shows buyers stepped in aggressively on the right side of the pattern. Opponents of the V-bottom argue that the price didn’t stabilize before bottoming, and therefore, the price may drop back to test that level. Chart patterns occur when the price of an asset moves in a way that resembles a common shape, like a triangle, rectangle, head and shoulders, or—in this case—a cup and handle.

Alan Farley is a writer and contributor for TheStreet and the editor of Hard Right Edge, one of the first stock trading websites. He is an expert in trading and technical analysis cup and handle chart pattern 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.

Once prices penetrate the low of the right lip of the cup, then a sell signal is triggered and in the chart above prices fall thereafter. Once you learn what is Cup and Handle pattern you have no more excuses not to have a chance to succeed in trading. In the technical analysis field, the Cup Pair trading on forex and Handle pattern is one of the most profitable chart patterns. The Cup and Handle trading strategy is providing you with an effective way to exploit this pattern. Above is an example of two cup and handles that formed in the Big Tech share basket on our Next Generation trading platform.

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. 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 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.

The inverted cup and handle pattern forms an upside down cup and handle. Watch our video above to learn more about inverted cup and handles.Inverted c&h patterns are bearish continuation patterns. The inverted cup and handle pattern forms an upside down cup and handle (register for free and take our courses and you’ll learnhow to read the stock market).

There are several technical conditions that must be met before our algorithm will recognize a valid pivot. Firstly we want the stock to have attained a strong relative strength when compared to all other stocks, so we require an RS of 70 on a scale from 1-99. We also want the pivot to be approaching the left cup level, so we require the pivot price to be at least 60% of the left cup. Thirdly, there must have been sufficient time for a shakeout of holders during stage 2, and sufficient time for institutions to notice and take an interest in the stock during stage 3.

Kitchen Trading Hours

After the price breaks the handle downwards, we see the creation of a new 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. The Cup and Handle pattern is aptly named because this technical pattern actually resembles a cup with a handle on the chart. The pattern starts with a price decrease, where the Forex pair gradually changes its direction. $SCRT looks ready to push up to the 1.618 @ $20.88, after a brief pullback from its huge rally earlier this month.

Author: Mary Hall