What are bear traps and bull traps for cryptocurrency? How can I avoid it?

The price moves above a prior high point in price or above a resistance level. After reaching a price of $30, XYZ again begins to gain value, rising to $35. During this time, investors begin purchasing shares, expecting XYZ to return to its previous highs. A high RSI might be an indication of a potential bull or bear trap. Bear markets and steep, broad-based sell-offs are often followed by quick, sharp rallies. So how and when can investors know if price upswings are for real and have legs—or are just a mirage?

Here, naive traders get sucked into entering trades,thinking that the market has gotten momentum. Unfortunately the big bears burst out of the woodwork to drag the price lower, leaving the rookies trapped in a costly losing position. If prices are on resistance levels, do not try to buy assets. The trading culture is buying at the support levels and selling at the resistance level. Unless, of course, the retest indicates a start of a new trend. Therefore, when a breakout occurs, traders usually wait for confirmation signals by looking at various technical indicators to see if bearish or bullish momentum is actually building up. Indicators that you can use to confirm this include the RSI, Average True Range, Bollinger Bands, Moving Averages, and more.

What Makes Bull Traps Happen? Wishful Thinking

A bull trap is a chart pattern that often appears at the end of an uptrend. Let’s see how to take advantage of the Bull Trap, taking trades to profit from trapped traders. Financial markets are full of traps and traders keep falling on them over and over. A trader needs to be prepared for the reversal as sometimes price can continuously move in the breakout direction. A bull trap is a good way to realize https://www.beaxy.com/exchange/eth-usd/ profits quickly and avoid keeping an open position for a long time. A trader needs to be patient enough in order to successfully trade on the bull trap, which means he needs to miss some profitable trades. Traders with short positions are taken out and trapped out of the market. Traders are placed short, breakout traders jump in to recover their loss, then rejoined the trend after getting stopped out.

An example of a market-wide bull trap would be what investors saw in the S&P 500 from 2007 to 2009. Over the next two months, the S&P recovered around half its losses. This was a bull trap, however, because the gains were short-lived. The S&P dropped to 683 by March 2009, the lowest point since 1996. This bull trap occurred when XYZ reached $30 and began to rise, tricking investors who believed it would continue to gain value into buying shares, only to see its value decline again. There are a few kinds of stop-losses to choose from, including standard, trailing or guaranteed. Look for whether the asset is currently overbought, which could indicate a bearish reversal from the prevailing bullish trend. You could also wait before opening long position following a breakout, to see if the bullish trend continues. The final feature of a bull trap arrangement is that it creates a range-like pattern on the resistance level. The first indication of an approaching bull trap is a powerful bullish momentum maintained for a long time, but which reacts swiftly to a particular resistance zone.

Bitcoin BTC Price Analysis: A Quick Look at the 1

Many traders involved in cryptocurrency trading are novices — after all, crypto has a much lower entry barrier and higher potential profits than stocks or Forex. In crypto trading, bull and bear traps are strong up or down price moves followed by an unexpected reversal. Read more about btc to eth calculator here. It’s easy to get fooled and jump into a trap, hoping for large gains -only to end up with losses. In this article, we’ll explain how bull and bear traps work and how to recognize them early. A pending resistance level may be found in the chart’s upper part.

A bull trap is a false signal, referring to a declining trend in a stock, index, or other security that reverses after a convincing rally and breaks a prior support level. The best way to handle bull traps is to recognize warning signs ahead of time, such as low volume breakouts, and exit the trade as quickly as possible if a bull trap is suspected. A bull trap occurs when a trader or investor buys a security that breaks out above a resistance level — a common technical analysis-based strategy. When this happens, they can get caught in a bear trap where they may liquidate their position at a loss. Due to a unidirectional mentality , investors accustomed to trading in a bull market might fall into the trap of buying high and selling low. Experts having a bidirectional mentality to succeed in both bull and bear markets, as this allows for greater profits during long-term trends. Blackburn walked Toro to load the bases with two out in the second but got Sam Haggerty to ground out on a first-pitch curveball. Bull traps are used by both day traders and long-term investors to take advantage of unsuspecting market participants. For day traders, a bull trap can be an opportunity to short the security as it rallies back up to the previous high.

What is a bull trap or a bear trap?

You want to see if price breaks that level and remain above that resistance level. If you are caught in a bull trap in forex trading, then it is a very unfortunate trading situation to be in. Kent Thune, CFP®, is a fiduciary investment advisor specializing in tactical asset allocation and portfolio management with a focus on ETFs and sector investing. Mr. Thune has 25 years of wealth management experience and has navigated clients through four bear markets and some of the most challenging economic environments in history. As a writer, Kent’s articles have been seen on multiple investing and finance websites, including Seeking Alpha, Kiplinger, MarketWatch, The Motley Fool, Yahoo Finance, and The Balance. Mr. Thune’s registered investment advisory firm is headquartered in Hilton Head Island, SC where he serves clients all around the United States. When not writing or advising clients, Kent spends time with his wife and two sons, plays guitar, or works on his philosophy book that he plans to publish later in 2022. Use alternative trading strategies that can limit losses, such as buying put options. Hey guys , just found a good stock to talk about , HDFC BANK was moving in a great downtrend . Impatient traders would have jumped into the trade as soon as it broke the trend line, and thus, they would have gotten trapped.

When traders are greedy, they tend to chase trades because they don’t want to miss out. First and foremost, bull traps occur most often in bearish trends. I wish I could but sometimes I do get caught out and that’s the way its going to be as long as forex trading still exists. If you buy on the breakout of a resistance level and price shoots up.

What causes a bull trap?

The classic series of YouTube lectures by the technical trader known as @CryptoCred is a good place to start. Both bull and bear traps can be very frustrating for traders who base their trading decisions on breakouts. Fortunately, there are ways to avoid bull traps and even to make money with them, which will be explained further below. Bull traps are false buying signals that “trap” investors and traders who acted based on those signals.
A market rally can be expected based on the current market breadth. Next, we need to determine the quality of the potential rally to anticipate how far it can go. Last week S&P 500, Dow Jones, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 all broke below the major support and dropped sharply into an oversold condition. This sharp move was anticipated just right before it happened based on the bear market leading indicator as I discussed in the video at the bottom of the post. In addition to a buy stop, another popular type of a limit order is known as sell stop. In it, you direct a broker to short a company below the price. This means that the short trade will be initiated only when the price drops below this level. Therefore, we recommend that you focus on limit orders, which are conditional. For example, assume that a stock is trading between the narrow range of $10 and $12.

• Long-term investors are unable to exit the market, implying that they are expecting the prices to go up.
• Not investment advice, or a recommendation of any security, strategy, or account type.
• Even though it might be tempting to open a short after you notice a bull trap, lower liquidity means higher trading costs and erratic price movements.
• It’s why traders have great expectations; they anticipate it will reach the next level!

When liquidity erodes at these levels, market price declines back and is within the resistance zone. If you’ve been investing for any amount of time and haven’t fallen into a bull trap or two consider yourself fortunate. Bull traps happen because they have the appearance of being real. The long-positioned trader is trapped and this pattern often follows a very similar rhythm of luring traders into “obvious” long trades, followed by a sudden move against the traders. ● In as much as the trade came back down, it did not break past the support level, so the stop loss was intact. To the trader’s delight, the trade recovered and went back up towards the take profit level. ● After the retest candle, the price closed above the support level. After a short period of ranging here, it formed a huge bearish candle that engulfed the previous bearish candles. In a nutshell, a trader should always wait for the price to not only break a resistance zone but also retest it and gain upper momentum before executing their buy orders. Keen traders, both buyers, and sellers know that careless traders will come in and add trades during pullbacks.

Explanation of Bull Trap Chart Pattern

Most rookie traders make the mistake of thinking that just because the market makes an aggressive move, it gives them the green light to buy or sell at the break out. If you buy or sell without reading the signals correctly,you risk getting faked out by the market. And when the market fakes you out, it sets a bull or bear trap for you. Many traders see this as a bullish reversal and start buying, thinking that the downtrend has ended.J. Unfortunately, this is usually just a temporary move, and the price soon resumes its downward trend, leading to heavy losses for those who bought at or near the top.

In this case, you can place a market order when it rises to $12.50. With those definitions in mind, let’s examine the two types of day trading traps. Emotions can run wild, and if you don’t have stops or profit targets ready, then you’re more likely to get caught up in the heat of the moment and make a mistake. Sometimes traders will get “FOMO” and chase into a trade because they don’t want to miss out on a potential profit-grabbing opportunity.

Another version of bull trap chart pattern A bull trap candlestick breaks the resistance and goes higher, but then closes below the resistance level forming a bearish candlestick. The difference between the two is that bull traps put traders into losing long positions while bear straps put traders in short positions. Therefore, when a breakout occurs, traders usually wait for confirmatory signals by looking at different technical indicators to see if bearish or bullish momentum is truly building up. Indicators you can use to confirm this include the Relative Strength Index, Average True Range, Bollinger Bands, and Moving Averages, among others. You may consider entering a short trade if the price falls back below the resistance level, as the move higher was a false signal. There are additional tools that can be used for confirmation, such as technical indicators or candlestick patterns. A bull trap is a reversal against a bullish trend that forces long traders to abandon their positions in the face of rising losses. It is called a trap because it often catches traders off-guard, and comes on the back of a strong market rally that looked likely to continue.

A range means that the price appears to bounce back and forth within a support and resistance level. This range might not be perfect, especially on the upper side, because the market might still be making smaller higher highs. However, after the price reached the marked resistance level, it would slow down and pull back a little before pushing higher. As we can see, there were three tests before the bear trap eventually happened.

A bull trap is the opposite of a “bear trap” which can fool traders into selling out too soon in the middle of a bull market. Open a demo account or to practise trading on bull traps within the financial markets. This is possible via spread betting and contracts for difference . You can trade a bull trap by opening a short position when you identify that a bear trap is in effect. These enable you to take a position on an asset without having to directly own it, making them well-suited to shorting. In the instance of a probable bull trap, a high RSI and overbought circumstances suggest that selling pressure is increasing. Bull traps occur during periods of market uncertainty or when false information is circulating about a particular asset.

Bulls for that stock will interpret this as a great buying opportunity but are typically blind to the weak technicals. The key here is the perception of a trend reversal, just enough to lure in the “buy the dip” crowd. When the price begins declining again, these bulls are forced to sell out of their positions, adding more fuel to the fire. But lo and behold, it turns out it is NOT a great time, because the price soon reverses direction, catching buyers in a money-losing trap. Those who shorted can become trapped in a losing trade and must buy to exit, and those who sold may experience regret for selling and wish to buy again, driving the price higher. The lesson of the bull trap is that buying at the very first sign of a possible new uptrend can be dangerous.

A range-like pattern may be formed when a price bounces back and forth within support and resistance level. Traders can avoid bull traps by keeping their eyes out for confirmations following a breakout. As we have already mentioned, bear traps are easy to execute in the crypto market, so it is crucial to learn how to avoid getting caught in them. The only reliable way to identify a bear trap is to use technical analysis.

Advances in stock prices don’t necessarily change the trend. Any considerable amount of selling would send this stock soaring below its previous lows. You see massive declines with no support from the bulls on the way down, followed by a timid response by the bulls. A conviction buyer is a catch-all term for well-capitalized individuals and funds who are establishing a long-term position and intend to add more on price declines. If you’re looking for additional reading to supplement your forex trading education, you’ve come to the… These chart patterns, and more, are covered in our guide to the 11 most essential stock chart patterns. It may be a good idea to place a stop-loss order above the recent high to control risk in the event that the price continues moving higher. Identify a resistance line on the chart by marking the top of a price range or recent swing highs.