Bollinger Bands Basic rules

Bollinger Bands
Basic rules


One of the great joys of having invented an analytical technique such as Bollinger Bands is seeing what other people do with it. Although there are many ways to use Bollinger bands, a few rules that serve as a good starting point.
§ Bollinger Bands provide a relative definition of high and low.
§ that relative definition can be used to compare price action and indicator action to arrive at rigorous buy and sell decisions.
§ appropriate indicators can be derived from dynamics, volume, sentiment, open interest, inter-market data, etc.
§ Volatility and trend have already been deployed in the construction of Bollinger Bands, so their use for confirmation of price action is not recommended.
§ The indicators used for confirmation should not be directly connected to one another. Two indicators of the same category do not increase confirmation. Avoid colinearity.
§ Bollinger bands can also be used to clarify the real price models such as M-type tops and W-type bottoms, momentum shifts, etc.
§ Price, and no, you can go to the upper Bollinger Band and down the lower Bollinger Band.
§ closes outside the Bollinger Bands can be a continuation signals, not reversal signals - as demonstrated by the use of Bollinger Bands in some very successful volatility-breakout systems.
§ The standard parameters of 20 periods for the moving average and standard deviation calculations, and two standard deviations for the bandwidth are just that, by default. The actual parameters needed for any given market / task may be different.
§ The average deployed should not be the best one for crossovers. Rather, it should be descriptive of the intermediate-term trend.
§ If the average is extended to a number of standard deviations should be increased at the same time, from 2 to 20 periods of 2.1 to 50 times. Also, if the average is shortened the number of standard deviations should be reduced, from 2 to 20 periods, to 1.9 at 10 periods.
§ Bollinger bands are based on simple moving average. This is because a simple moving average is used in a standard deviation calculation and we want to be logically consistent.
§ Be careful about making statistical assumptions based on the use of standard deviation calculation in the construction of the bands. Sample size in most deployments of Bollinger Bands is too small for statistical significance and the distributions involved are rarely normal.
§ indicators can be normalized with% b, eliminating fixed thresholds in the process.
§ Finally, tags of bands are just that, Labels signals. A designation of the upper Bollinger Band is in non-and-out-sell signal itself. A label on the lower Bollinger Band is in non-and-out-myself to buy signal.