How Minervini, O’Neil, Darvas, and Kullamägi approach breakout entries, illustrated through real charts, volume clues, and defined risk.

Finding a leading stock is only part of the process. You still need to recognize when the setup is ready, identify where to enter, and decide where the trade would be invalidated. A strong stock can become a poor trade if your execution leaves too little potential reward for the risk you take.

In this video, I walk through four well-known entry approaches using historical chart examples.

Here’s what we cover:

• 00:12 | Mark Minervini’s Volatility Contraction Pattern. Using NVIDIA’s consolidation ahead of its early 2024 breakout, we examine progressively smaller pullbacks, volume drying up, and the final move through resistance. I also discuss the earnings, sales, AI theme, and semiconductor leadership that supported the setup.
• 02:48 | William O’Neil’s Cup With Handle. We review the prior advance, rounded base, and tightening handle, then examine how volume behaves as the stock approaches and clears its pivot.
• 04:03 | Nicolas Darvas’s Box Method. We look at how a strong advance develops into a defined trading range, where an entry and protective stop might fit, and how successive boxes can create opportunities to add to a winning position. NVIDIA’s 2016 advance helps illustrate that progression.
• 06:31 | Kristjan Kullamägi’s Opening Range Breakout. Using Tesla, we connect the daily setup with an intraday entry. The example uses a 15-minute opening range to illustrate the concept, with the day’s low providing a clear reference for initial risk. We also briefly examine how moving averages and deteriorating price structure can inform trade management.

Across these examples, watch for the recurring characteristics: a strong prior advance, tightening price action, reduced selling pressure, and a clearly defined breakout level.

The video also revisits why win rate alone tells you very little. Repeated small losses can be manageable when the winners are sufficiently large relative to those losses. That relationship depends on disciplined execution and what your trades actually produce.

This walkthrough focuses on entries. Selling, adding to positions, and managing a trade deserve their own deeper discussion.

As you watch, study where the setup tightens, where the entry becomes actionable, and where the original trade idea would fail. Those are the decisions that turn a recognizable pattern into a repeatable process.

Take the Next Step in Your Trading

If you’d like to learn more, consider taking the Momentum Trading Strategy Course. Built on a century of momentum and trend trading principles, the course draws on the methods of these legendary traders and the approach I’ve used and refined over the past 20 years.

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