Fat Side Path

24 Apr 2021

I got the idea for a narrow Donchian Channel with a short lookback period which closely follows the price fluctuation in which the sides of the channel have a thickness according to the range of the last touching candle.
Any channel, be it Donchian, Keltner, Bollinger Bands or Parallel, has an upside and a downside, touching the upside is a buy signal as this may initiate an uptrend, the downside a sell signal because a down trend may come.
This gave me the idea to make only the last touched side fat, thus creating visible switching between uptrend and downtrend. However this is ‘too digital’, as in practice also periods of no trend occur in which signaling a trend would give a false signal. In a Donchian channel (and also Bollinger Bands) such periods are marked by narrowing the channel. So I gave a no trend signal to the sides when the channel is narrower than a minimum width to call a trend. I gave the thing nice colours and proper default settings.

Use of the channel in trading.
I think this thing can be useful for swing trading. In channels two typical things may happen that should be noted by the trader, these are LB, Leaving the Border, which signals a trend reversal and FTT, Failure To Traverse, i.e. the price doesn’t manage to cross the channel to the other side. This affirms the trend. FTT’s are not expected in short lookback channels like this path (Sidenote: Fibonacci levels can be regarded as predictions where FTT’s may occur). The fat side indicates direction. Because somehow trends seem to end with a notable range extension, this channel sometimes produces a “Big Blob” where the trend reverses.

I intend to use this thing together with my Keltner Fibzones channel, where the zones serve as a ‘landscape’ in which the Fat Side Path meanders providing ‘comments’ on the short term price movements.