Without knowing the contents of your course, and I don’t want to, I can’t comment on the apparent discrepancy between your expectations of 70% ‘strike rate’ and your current experiences. The breakout is a time-tested method and works well in all markets. But it is just a method. If you don’t have the system to go with it, you’re wasting your time.
Watching the development of the necessary precursors to a valid breakout and waiting for the apparent breakout are all empirically demonstrable and have clear criteria for their recognition. Trading the breakout basically comes in three flavours, all of which are equally simple to employ and manage. It is the ability to determine within any of these three primary flavours of breakout, when you are sitting on a false breakout and what to do about it. You don’t always dump the position on a false breakout as there are other factors which are instrument specific and give you more clues as to position development and adjustment. It is these specific instrument nuances which I suspect were not taught to you on your course and can only be picked up through exposure and experience.
I would treat your course as a primer to trading breakouts rather than a guarantee to give you a 70% ‘strike rate’. Breakouts are bread & butter trades and could form the staple of your trading diet. You would be unwise in my view to ditch them just because they haven’t lived up to the advertiser’s promises.
