Research record · Descriptive
Breakout: Multi-Timeframe Breakout Research
Breakout marks the moment a coin breaks past its last 20 candles on the 1-minute, 5-minute, 1-hour and 4-hour charts within 15 minutes, in the same direction. A fixed test rule made money in the period where the event was found and lost money on older data held back for the confirmation test. It did not pass, so Breakout is an event to look at, not a prediction.
- Mid-2024 to July 2026, where the event was found: +1.9% per trade after costs under the test rule (71 coins, 2,725 trades).
- June 2022 to May 2023, data unused until the confirmation test: −1.6% per trade (142 coins, 2,100 trades). It did not pass.
- Events only happen in the 15 minutes after a 4-hour candle closes, six times a day.
- Many coins often break out in the same window when the whole market moves; read that as one move.
What Breakout watches
On each of the 1-minute, 5-minute, 1-hour and 4-hour charts, a breakout is a candle that closes above the highest high of the 20 candles before it, or below the lowest low. An event fires when all four do it in the same direction within 15 minutes, and price is on the same side of the Bollinger Band middle line on every chart from 1 minute to 1 day.
The 4-hour line is the 20-candle high or low the coin broke. The Scout shows how far price is from that line now, in 4-hour ATR (average true range, a coin’s typical movement per candle), and whether the coin is holding past the line or has slipped back through it. A coin gets no new event in the same direction until a 4-hour candle closes back through its line, or 24 4-hour candles (4 days) have passed.
Why it only happens six times a day
A 4-hour breakout can only happen when a 4-hour candle closes, and so can a 1-hour one at the same moment. So the full set can only come together in the 15 minutes after a 4-hour close. All 2,291 events in the confirmation period did. The 4-hour closes come at the same six times every day, every 4 hours, and the Scout shows them in your own time zone.
The test
To measure what happened after each event, the research used one fixed test rule: a limit order at the 4-hour line within 4 candles of the event, a stop 3 ATR away, a target 5 ATR away, held for up to 16 days, with 0.10% costs taken off every trade. It is a way of measuring, not a suggestion to trade it. Both periods are always shown together.
| Period | Coins | Test trades | Average per trade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-2024 to July 2026 (where it was found) | 71 | 2,725 | +1.9% |
| June 2022 to May 2023 (confirmation) | 142 | 2,100 | −1.6% |
Against random moments with the same Bollinger alignment, events were 2.6 points ahead per trade in 2024–26 and 0.8 points behind in 2022–23, where random moments ranged from −3.3 to +1.7.
Why it did not pass
181 setups and 675 rules were searched before this event was chosen. A search that size turns up good-looking results by chance, which is why older data was held back and used only once, at the end. Breakout looked best where it was found; on the confirmation data it was the weakest of the six candidates. So WarRoom makes no claim about what happens after a Breakout event.
Limits
- The research covered mid-to-large liquid coins on Binance USD-M perpetual futures. The Scout lists events on every coin the engine watches.
- Events bunch up when the whole market moves, so events in one window are not independent of each other.
- About 0.053–0.072 events per coin per day; 12–27% of days had none.
- Fills, slippage and funding beyond the 0.10% costs are not modelled.
Frequently asked questions
Does a Breakout event tell me which way to trade?
No. It reports that the 1-minute, 5-minute, 1-hour and 4-hour charts broke their range together. A fixed test rule gained after these events in 2024–26 and lost in 2022–23, so no outcome is claimed. Use it to see which coins broke out on every timeframe at once and whether they are holding past the 4-hour line.
What does “back through the line” mean?
The 4-hour line is the 20-candle high or low the coin broke. If price has since returned past that line, the breakout has slipped back. The distance shown is where price is now, not where it is going.
Why do so many coins break out at once?
Because the whole market often moves together. When at least 15 coins break the same way in one window, the Scout marks it as market-wide and folds it into one line, so it reads as one move rather than dozens.
Educational content, not financial advice. Historical results do not guarantee future outcomes.