False Breakout

False breakouts are common — more common than traders who trade breakouts prefer to acknowledge. Price pushes through a range boundary, sometimes dramatically, and then reverses. Wicks extend beyond the boundary but bodies close back inside the range, or price crosses through and then grinds back within a handful of candles. The aggression that produced the break ran out of support, met deeper opposing liquidity than expected, or was a temporary surge that the range absorbed on a slight delay. The solution is not to stop trading breakouts — it is to wait for the confirmation that separates genuine from false.