Is it just me or maybe you guys noticed this as well: wether it's a 5 min, 60 min or daily chart buying pullbacks work about 30% of the time and breakouts about 50% of the time? Did anybody noticed similar thing?
good luck. this is not the market of 5-6 years ago. Big money is very reluctant to buy and keeps selling every rally screwing just about any breakout type stuff.
Personally, I find breakouts considerably riskier to trade than buying or selling pullbacks. So much so, that I don't even consider breakouts anymore. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I'm fairly comfortable with that approach.
For breakouts to work, you need a market with a lot of momentum, either up or down. This market moves once in a while but in a very sluggish way, rendering most breakouts unprofitable.
Of late, I have a slightly better than 2/3 chance of having a profitable or scratch trade than I do of incurring a losing trade.
Further, I also found that I needed a larger protective stop for breakout setups than I did for the pullback variety, at least in the case of my own setups. And I do so hate unnecessarily added risk.
It changes all the time. Breakouts on an itraday basis have been working pretty well for me lately while the pullbacks have been harder. Go figure.