New Techniques  |  JUL 2000

Bollinger Band Targets by Benjamin L.Cotton

Bollinger Band Targets by Benjamin L.Cotton You can calculate the future price movement necessary to cross a moving standard deviation band condition such as a Bollinger Band, emoving the guess-work from systems trading on such elationships. Here's the logic behind such an indicator as well as the TradeStation programming that makes it work. My November 1999 article for STOCKS & COMMODITIES introduced the BogieMA, an indicator that solves for the future price that would trigger a moving average crossover. This type of indicator saves traders from plugging in a best-guess price in a database until a trade is simulated. However, moving average relationships are relatively simple to solve; systems that utilize more complex relationships can be much more difficult to solve. I've done the work for you for one of the most popular indicators around, Bollinger Bands. To do this, I used two standard deviation bogie indicators. These indicators solve for the price movement necessary to trigger a standard deviation band (such as Bollinger Bands) using the following rule:

by Benjamin L. Cotton