The TTM Squeeze

Volatility is cyclical. The squeeze is how you find a market holding its breath — and it is silent on which way it exhales.

What is a TTM Squeeze?

TTM Squeeze

Two envelopes are drawn around price. The Bollinger Bands widen and narrow with recent price variance. The Keltner Channels widen and narrow with the average daily range — a steadier, slower measure.

A squeeze fires when the Bollinger Bands contract entirely inside the Keltner Channels, and are still narrowing. Variance has collapsed below the range the coin normally covers in a day, and is tightening further.

Both conditions matter. Bands inside the channel alone is a quiet market; bands inside the channel and still contracting is a market winding up.

Why compression precedes movement

When price compresses into a tight range, neither buyers nor sellers are dominating. Positions accumulate on both sides at prices nobody is being forced away from. The tighter it gets, the more of that stored disagreement has to resolve when one side finally gives.

The practical consequence matters more than the theory: a tight range gives you a nearby stop. You do not need conviction about the direction to take the trade, because the coil itself defines how much you lose if you are wrong. That is the whole appeal — small, well-defined risk against an unusually large potential move.

The coil, on a real chart

ETH coiling for 8 sessions from 31 Jul 2026, a 9.1% band inside a Green trend. The Bollinger Bands (blue) contract inside the Keltner Channels (dashed purple); every bar where both conditions held carries a dot. The amber box is the tight range — the level to clear, and the level to stop below. Note the second coil a week later: consolidations often print as two, and the release came off the pair.

Read the blue shape, not the individual lines. It narrows into the coil, disappears inside the dashed channel, then flares open as the move begins. The dots stop the moment either condition breaks — which is usually a bar or two before the obvious candle.

The squeeze does not tell you direction

This is the single most important thing on the page. A squeeze says a large move is loading. It says nothing about which way. Coils under a falling average resolve downward about as often as coils under a rising one resolve up.

So the squeeze is never traded alone. You stack conditions that tilt the odds toward an upside resolution — a rising 50 EMA, a Green trend, the longer averages in the right order — and you cap the band width so the coil is actually tight.

Never trade a squeeze on its own

The deck is explicit about it: the filter's purpose is to find low volatility, so the odds of an upward resolution have to be added separately — a rising 50 EMA, a Green trend, and a cap on band width. A squeeze by itself tells you a move is coming, not which way.

How to trade it

Entry: The break of the tight range — when price clears the high of the coil. Don't buy the squeeze itself; the coil can persist for weeks and can break either way. Buy the release.
Stop: Below the low of the coil. Where a rising 50 EMA sits close under that low, use the EMA instead — it is the level the trend itself is defending.
Position sizing: The tight range is the point: a small stop distance means a full-sized position carries ordinary risk. Size from the distance to the stop, not from conviction.
Works best when: Price is close to the rising 50 EMA — within roughly 6–7%. The closer it sits, the tighter the stop can be, and the more the trend is doing the work for you.
A better sign still: The bar that breaks the range reaches the upper Bollinger Band. Expansion confirming in the same direction as the break is what a real release looks like.
Avoid when: Used alone, or in a downtrend. A coil under a falling 50 EMA resolves down as often as up, and you will have taken a long into it.

When it fails

Used alone. The squeeze finds compression, and compression resolves in whichever direction the market was already leaning — so a coil under a falling 50 EMA is a short setup you have just bought.

Without a band-width cap. A coin can satisfy the squeeze condition at a band width that is not, in any useful sense, tight — and then you are holding a quiet coin rather than a coiled one.

And a coil can simply keep coiling. Nothing obliges a squeeze to release on your timetable; the release is the trade, and until it happens there is no trade.

Adjusting for a bad market

When conditions are poor, demanding a Green trend on top of everything else can empty the list entirely. The accepted relaxation is to accept Green or Yellow — a coin that is not in a confirmed downtrend, rather than one in a confirmed uptrend.

Never relax the Rising 50 EMA. It is the condition that separates a coil in a base from a coil on the way down, and the one filter the record supports keeping under every condition.

This sits well with the regime split above: the setup is already at its best in falling markets, so the sensible adjustment is to widen what qualifies, not to stop trading it.

Scan recipes

The first four are the lists the TTM Squeeze page runs every day — these are the filters behind them, if you would rather build them yourself.

Coiled spring

1TTM Squeeze on
2🔑 Rising 50 EMA on
3BB Gap % slider → max 12

→ The classic scan — quiet coins coiling while the 50 EMA still points up.

Green trend

1TTM Squeeze on
2🔑 Rising 50 EMA on
3Trend → Green
4BB Gap % slider → max 12

→ Their headline list: the same coil, with the trend colour agreeing.

The full stack

1TTM Squeeze on
210>20 EMA Rising on
3🔑 Rising 50 EMA on
4Trend → Green
5U/D Ratio slider → min 1.2
6BB Gap % slider → max 12

→ Every condition the setup's author puts on it. Empty most days, by design.

On a Fresh Bull level

1TTM Squeeze on
2FB Support on

→ A coil sitting on a level price already reclaimed — 0 to 5% above the Fresh Bull high, day 3 to 30.

Tight and close to the line

1TTM Squeeze on
2🔑 Rising 50 EMA on
3Away from 50 EMA % → −7 to 7
4BB Gap % slider → max 12

→ Coils sitting right on the 50 EMA, so the stop can go under the average itself. No live list — build it yourself.

Bad-market variant

1TTM Squeeze on
2🔑 Rising 50 EMA on
3Trend → Green and Yellow
4BB Gap % slider → max 12

→ Keeps the list populated when nothing is in a confirmed uptrend. No live list — build it yourself.

On the Screener

TTM Squeeze is a checkbox under Volatility & Range Filters, and shows as a badge in the Patterns column. BB Gap % is the slider that does the heavy lifting, and Trend is the colour column.

Today's lists, already filtered: the TTM Squeeze strategy page.