Breakout trading buys a stock as it pushes to a new high, betting the move continues. Ice Juice Trading's Breakout 55 template automates a classic long-term breakout on your own Alpaca account — it buys 55-day highs and exits on a 20-day low, in the spirit of the old Turtle trend-following system. You set the risk limits; it runs on paper first. No code.
A breakout strategy enters when price clears a prior high — the idea being that a new high signals demand strong enough to carry the move further. It's a form of trend-following, and it shares that family's signature shape: fewer winners than losers, but the winners are large because you stay in a real trend for a long time. The two-sided channel — buy new highs, exit on new lows — is the same "Donchian channel" logic that powered the famous Turtle Traders.
Enter when the price breaks above the highest high of the last 55 days.
Exit when the price falls below the lowest low of the last 20 days.
The long 55-day entry keeps you out of minor pops and in only for meaningful breakouts; the shorter 20-day exit gives back less of a winner when the trend finally turns. Every knob is yours to set: dollars per position, stop-loss %, maximum open positions — or point the same channel at your own basket of tickers.
Breakout systems live and die by big trends: a few large winners pay for many small losses, so the strategy can feel frustrating in a sideways market where breakouts fail and stop out. Expect a sub-50% win rate by design — the edge is in the size of the winners relative to the losers, not in being right often. That makes discipline (taking every signal, sizing consistently) unusually important here.
In our own 3-year backtest, the built-in Breakout 55 template had a profit factor of 1.97 over 655 trades with a sub-50% win rate — the classic trend-follower profile. Those results are hypothetical, don't reflect actual trading, and past performance does not guarantee future results. Use the built-in backtester to run it over history on your own basket, then paper-trade it live on simulated money before risking real capital.
Automate breakouts on your Alpaca account →
Explore all seven built-in strategies — including the volume-confirmed Volume Surge, Trend Rider (momentum), the Golden Cross, and the Dip Buyer (mean reversion) — or compare plans and pricing (free paper trading included).