Bollinger Squeeze Breakout

How this strategy trades, what it scored, and the measurements the score was read from: every symbol and timeframe, on real and resampled history.

At A Glance

27/ 100
Total Score
42of 52
Overall Rank
5of 5
In Breakout
5,091
Trades Taken

Across 24 runs of real history, one for every market and bar size it trades, this strategy scored highest on ETHUSDT · 4h (44 / 100) and lowest on BTCUSDT · 30m (8 / 100).

What A $100.00 Stake Became

Score
Total Score Mean Of Real And Resampled 27 / 100
Real Data 26 / 100
Resampled Data 28 / 100
Overall Rank Top 81% 42 of 52
Rank In Breakout Top 100% 5 of 5
By Metric
Beats Hold Real 6 · Resampled 28 17 / 100
Risk Adjusted Real 25 · Resampled 20 22 / 100
Profitability Real 16 · Resampled 11 13 / 100
Win Rate Real 39 · Resampled 35 37 / 100
Fee Efficiency Real 87 · Resampled 87 87 / 100

Where It Works

How It Trades

  1. Compute 20-bar Bollinger Bands and watch their relative width: upper band minus lower band, divided by the middle. Narrow bands mean the market has gone unusually quiet.
  2. A squeeze is on when the width hits its lowest value of the last 125 bars: volatility is as compressed as it has been in roughly six months of bars, and quiet markets tend to resolve into violent moves.
  3. Buy the first close above the upper band within 5 bars of a squeeze: the compression resolving upward with force. A band break without a fresh squeeze is ignored.
  4. Sell when the close falls back below the middle band: the expansion has run its course.

Example Strategy

Pine Script

Paste it into TradingView’s Pine Editor to run these rules on any chart.

//@version=6
// Bollinger Squeeze Breakout — sort.finance. Fills at the signal bar's close, 0.02% fee a side,
// whole account per trade, as the backtest. History and indicator warm-up
// differ from the site's, so expect close to the same trades, not identical.
strategy("Bollinger Squeeze Breakout", overlay=false,
     initial_capital=100, default_qty_type=strategy.percent_of_equity,
     default_qty_value=100, commission_type=strategy.commission.percent,
     commission_value=0.02, process_orders_on_close=true, pyramiding=0)

// The bar the current position opened on, and the bar the last one closed on.
var int entryBar = na
var int exitBar = -1

// ── Signals ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[middle, upper, lower] = ta.bb(close, 20, 2)
width = (upper - lower) / middle
// A squeeze is band width at its 125-bar low; it counts while it
// was seen in the 5 bars before the breakout.
squeezed = width <= ta.lowest(width, 125)
recentlySqueezed = ta.highest(squeezed ? 1 : 0, 5)[1] == 1
enterNow = recentlySqueezed and close[1] <= upper[1] and close > upper
exitNow = close[1] >= middle[1] and close < middle

// ── Orders ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
// Open on the first bar the entry holds while flat; close on the first
// later bar the exit holds; never reopen on the bar a position closed.
inTrade = strategy.position_size != 0
if inTrade and bar_index > entryBar and exitNow
    strategy.close("Long")
    exitBar := bar_index
else if not inTrade and bar_index > exitBar and enterNow
    strategy.entry("Long", strategy.long)
    entryBar := bar_index

// ── Drawing ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
plot(upper, "Upper Band", color=#8a92a0, force_overlay=true)
plot(middle, "Middle Band", color=#4d8dff, force_overlay=true)
plot(lower, "Lower Band", color=#8a92a0, force_overlay=true)
plot(width * 100, "Band Width %", color=#e0a03a)
Show

Total Score

26 28 / 100

Score = 0.25 Sbeats_hold + 0.35 Srisk + 0.20 Sprofit + 0.10 Swin + 0.10 Sfee

One 0–100 number per symbol × timeframe cell. Every strategy is run on every cell, on both real and resampled price history, and the total beside its name is this number averaged over all of them.

Beats Hold

25% of the total

6 28 / 100

Sbeats_hold = clamp0100(50 + 25 log2EnetEhold)

Compares final net equity to what simply holding the asset would have returned over the same window. 50 is break-even; every doubling versus buy-and-hold adds 25 points.

Read From Net Equity · Price Change %

Net Equity

The account after fees, trade by trade.

Price Change %

What holding the asset made over the same stretch: the hold the account is measured against.

Risk Adjusted

35% of the total

25 20 / 100

Srisk = clamp0100(55 · Sharpe + 5)

A linear read on the rolling annualized Sharpe ratio at the last trade: 0 Sharpe scores 5, roughly 1.7 Sharpe maxes out the scale.

Read From Rolling Sharpe

Rolling Sharpe

The account's annualized Sharpe ratio at each trade's close.

Profitability

20% of the total

16 11 / 100

Sprofit = clamp0100(20 log2EnetE0)

How many times the starting cash multiplied, on a log scale: each doubling of capital is worth 20 points.

Read From Net Equity · Cumulative P&L %

Net Equity

The account after fees, against the cash it started with.

Cumulative P&L %

Not in the formula: every trade's return added up rather than compounded.

Win Rate

10% of the total

39 35 / 100

Swin = clamp0100(2.5 (W% − 20))

The share of trades that closed profitable, rescaled so a 20% win rate scores 0 and a 60% win rate maxes out the scale.

Read From Win Rate % · Trades

Win Rate %

The share of trades so far that closed in profit.

Trades

How many trades that share is taken over.

Fee Efficiency

10% of the total

87 87 / 100

Sfee = clamp0100(Enet/Egross − 0.40.6 × 100)

The share of the fee-free (gross) result that survives after fees: 60% survival scores 0, keeping the full gross result scores 100.

Read From Equity, Net And Gross · Cumulative Fees

Equity, Net And Gross

The account with the fees taken and, fainter, without them.

Cumulative Fees

Not in the formula: what the exchange took, which is the gap between net and gross above.