// myth-check
The myth
“Breakouts run.”
When price breaks above a ceiling, does it run?
"Buy the breakout" is gospel. But over six years, a clean break above resistance reached the next level up only about 1 time in 9 — and a third stalled right at the line.
A ceiling — "resistance" — is a price the market has stopped rising at before. The breakout story says the moment price pushes through, buyers chase and it runs to the next ceiling up. It is the most chased setup in retail trading. It is also a trap.
How we tested it
We found 691 clean breaks above a 4-hour ceiling over six years and asked: did price reach the next ceiling up before falling back through the level it just broke?
It ran only 11.6% of the time. Here is the honest part: about 1 in 3 breakouts (33.9%) simply ran out of room — the session ended or the next level was never in reach — before anything resolved. So "trap" means "it rarely runs," not "it always reverses." Either way, chasing the break paid off in geometry less than 1 time in 8.
The mirror of the broken-floor myth: the break is usually the end of the move, not the start.
What it means
Breaking a level — up or down — is the crowd’s signal to pile in. Six years of data say the crowd is mostly buying and selling exhaustion. The interesting money is in what happens next, not in the break itself.
// every setup, on the tape
All 691 clean setups from the test — winners, losers, and the ones that ran out of room. Tap any one to see the exact chart.
Verdict: A TRAP — this myth is mostly false. See all myth-checks →