Bollinger Band Mean Reversion: 1,180 Trades, 3.55 R:R
Bollinger Band Mean Reversion: 1,180 Trades and a 3.55 R:R
Most people use Bollinger Bands wrong. They see price touch the outer band and think: “breakout!” The data says otherwise. Over 1,180 backtested trades, the highest-expectancy play isn’t the breakout. It’s the snap-back.
Bollinger Band Mean Reversion is one of the five core strategies in our Edge Playbook, and it carries the highest R:R of any strategy we teach.
What Does the Data Say?
Across 1,180 trades in our TrendSpider backtesting:
Win rate: 49.3%. Less than a coin flip. But win rate is only half the equation.
Risk-to-Reward: 3.55. When this strategy wins, it wins big.
Expectancy: +1.243R per trade. Every trade, on average, returns 1.24 times your risk.
Why Does a Sub-50% Win Rate Strategy Work?
Because expectancy is what matters, not win rate. A strategy that wins 49% of the time but makes 3.55x on winners is massively profitable over a large sample.
The psychological challenge: you’ll lose more often than you w...
Snap Back Strategy
2,052 trades. 64% win rate. One simple rule: Only trade when RVOL says it's worth your time.
Most traders lose money on low-conviction setups. You get bored, see a "pattern," and pull the trigger on a stock with no volume, no volatility, and no edge. You get filled for a few ticks, then the market flatlines. You're stuck in a trade that never had a chance. That's not bad luck. That's bad filtering.
Glenn's primary strategy fixes this. RVOL + VWAP is not complicated. It's elegant. One filter keeps you out of garbage trades. One magnet gives you a target. The combination has been tested on thousands of trades. The results speak.
What Is RVOL and Why It Matters
RVOL is Relative Volume. It answers one question: Is this stock moving more volume than normal? If RVOL is 2.0, the stock is trading twice its average volume. If it's 0.5, it's moving half.
High RVOL means the stock woke up. There's liquidity. There's conviction. When institutional money is present, RVOL spikes. That's where y...