What is Squeeze breakout up? — chart signal explained
The width of the Bollinger Bands expands when price is choppy and contracts when things go quiet. Tightly pinched bands mean price has barely moved for a while — and markets have a habit of following quiet stretches with big moves. This signal catches the moment price starts tilting upward out of that squeeze.
When does it fire? — BaroBara criteria
It fires when the band width is narrower than the bottom 20% of its readings over the last 60 candles, and the close is sitting more than 0.5% above the 20-candle average.
How traders usually read it
The picture many traders see is a compressed spring starting to pop upward. The hope is that the energy stored up during the quiet spell gets released to the upside and turns into a sizable move higher.
What to watch out for
There's no way to know ahead of time which direction a squeeze will resolve, and head-fakes — a small tilt up followed by a hard break down — happen often. The 0.5% threshold is also a slim margin, so while the squeeze lasts, the up and down versions of this signal can flicker back and forth.
What the data actually shows (ATOM 1d)
The common reading is a bounce (up) — but what actually happened matters more. This signal has fired 29 times on ATOM 1d; across the most recent 29, price reached the small target (+0.25%) first about 62% of the time. Widen the target to ±1% and it becomes about 28%. A historical probability, not a guaranteed direction — and it shifts with market regime.
Odds and expected value — with symmetric target and stop (±)
Exactly the barobara framing: which side got hit first, +X% or −X%. Target and stop are set to the same %, and the win rate is how often the upside (+X%) was reached first.
| Target = stop (±) | Win rate (+ first) | EV (before fees) |
|---|---|---|
| ±0.25% | 62% | +0.06% |
| ±0.5% | 34% | -0.16% |
| ±0.75% | 28% | -0.33% |
| ±1% | 28% | -0.44% |
| ±1.5% | 28% | -0.66% |
| ±2% | 38% | -0.48% |
Broken down by market regime
⚠️ This table uses a different basis than the symmetric (±) table above — a small +0.25% target with a wide −5.0% stop (fees included). The small target makes the win rate look high while EV is often negative — exactly what signal groups hide. And the same signal behaves differently across regimes.
| Regime | Win rate (+0.25% target) | EV (−5.0% stop) | Sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sideways | 90% | -0.35% | N=20 |
Recent occurrences
How far price actually moved the last few times this signal fired (MFE = maximum favorable excursion).
| Date | MFE | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-09-09 | 6.45% | ✅ hit |
| 2025-09-17 | 2.99% | ✅ hit 🔴 stopped |
| 2026-01-01 | 29.63% | ✅ hit |
| 2026-03-14 | 8.82% | ✅ hit 🔴 stopped |
| 2026-04-07 | 2.1% | ✅ hit 🔴 stopped |
| 2026-04-13 | 7.87% | ✅ hit |
| 2026-04-18 | 15.42% | ✅ hit |
| 2026-04-20 | 14.33% | ✅ hit |
Strong conditions only, with past probability, sample size and validity window