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                    第37讲 Breakaway Gaps  (突破缺口)

As we remarked earlier in this chapter, gaps of this type actually occur on almost every decisive breakout from a horizontal congestion, although many of them do not show on the charts because they occur during a day and not between one day's close and the following day's opening. Breakaway gaps also develop at times when prices move out of other types of reversal or consolidation formations; they are not uncommon in connection with Head-and-Shoulders patterns, for instance, and they even occur on the penetration of trend lines which we shall discuss in a subsequent chapter.

What forecasting value can we ascribe to them? First, they serve to call attention to, and emphasize the fact of, a breakout. There can be little doubt that a genuine breakout has eventuated when prices jump out of a pattern with a conspicuous gap. False moves are seldom attended by gaps. Second, they carry the suggestion that the buying demand (or selling pressure, as the case may be) that produced the gap is stronger than would be indicated by a gapless breakout. Hence, it may be inferred that the ensuing move will carry prices farther or faster, or both. It does not do to make too much of this point; it is a logical inference and one which has been borne out in the majority of cases, but it has its exceptions, may prove most disappointing on occasion. Nevertheless, other things being equal, of two stocks which emerged from Ascending Triangles at the same time, we should choose to buy the one that gapped out over the one that pushed its way out by small fractional steps.

(One is constantly tempted in a work of this sort to employ the words always or never without qualification. Unfortunately, the authors have never been able to discover a rule of techniques to which the market did not, on rare occasion, produce an exception. It is always necessary to be on guard against such exceptional developments. Many of them are caused by general market conditions which counteract the technical trend in individual issues. Keep an eye on the charts of the "averages," as well as the particular issues in which you are interested.)

Where breakaway gaps develop intraday, the daily chart cannot, of course, indicate how the day's volume was distributed. In that event, it may be necessary to examine the ticker tape or ask your broker to refer to the published, record of individual transactions to which most brokerage firms subscribe. Lacking any clear cut volume clue, it is safest to figure that a breakaway gap will not be filled until long after the full move implied by the pattern of origin (usually a move of Intermediate extent in the Dow sense) has been carried out.