Does a touch of the upper band mean sell?

No. A touch means price is two standard deviations from its own 20-bar average — in a range that is stretched, in a trend it is normal and can persist for weeks. Use the touch as context and confirm with momentum, structure, or a regime filter before acting.

What is a Bollinger squeeze?

A local minimum in the distance between the two outer bands, meaning realised volatility has compressed. It says a move is being stored, not which way it will break. Because iBands has no band-width buffer, an EA has to compute upper minus lower itself, or use Standard Deviation as a stand-in.

Should I change the period or the deviation?

They do different things. The period sets what counts as 'the average' and how fast the channel adapts; the deviation sets how far price must travel to be called extreme. Change one at a time in a backtest — moving both at once makes the result impossible to attribute.

Can Bollinger Bands be built on a price other than the close?

Yes. iBands takes an ENUM_APPLIED_PRICE argument, so the bands can be built from Open, High, Low, Median, Typical or Weighted price. Close is the default and the usual choice; Typical price folds in the bar's range and gives a marginally steadier channel on wick-heavy instruments.

Can I build a Bollinger EA without coding?

Yes for band touches and middle-band crosses. The Bollinger Bounce template wires two band nodes against a Price node with period, deviation and applied price as EA inputs. Squeeze detection and band-walk recognition are the exceptions — both need a value iBands does not publish.

How should I validate settings before going live?

Backtest on quality tick data first, then run the EA on a demo account before risking money. When optimising, hold back data the search never saw and prefer settings that stay profitable across periods over the single in-sample peak — chasing that peak is overfitting the noise. No default or preset here is a performance promise; every value is a starting point to re-validate on your own pair and broker.

Volatilidad VolatilityMean ReversionBreakout Disponible en Builder

Bollinger Bands

Bollinger Bands wrap a moving average in two bands set a number of standard deviations away, so the channel widens when the market is volatile and contracts when it is quiet. They turn volatility into something you can compare across instruments and wire straight into a no-code EA.

Default settings: 20 / 2
Bands: Upper / Base / Lower
Scale: Price

Crear en Builder Receta de estrategia

Ilustrativo — datos sintéticos, no una cotización en vivo.

What Bollinger Bands tell you

The bands measure how far price has strayed from its own recent average, in units of that average's own volatility. That makes an extreme on EUR/USD directly comparable to an extreme on gold — and it makes the width of the channel a reading in its own right.

Wide bands: volatility is high — moves are running
Narrow bands: volatility is compressed — a move is being stored, not predicted
A touch is a statement about distance from the average, not a reversal signal

1 Average the applied price over N bars
2 Measure the deviation of the same window
3 Place bands a multiple of it above and below

Mostrar la fórmula y detalles de cálculo

Bollinger Bands are built from a moving average and the standard deviation of the same window — 20 bars and 2 deviations by default:

Compute the middle band: a simple moving average of the applied price over the period. In MT5 this is BASE_LINE, buffer 0.
Compute the standard deviation of the applied price over the same window — a measure of how widely the individual prices are scattered around that average.
Place the outer bands a multiple of that deviation above and below: UPPER = BASE + (D × σ) and LOWER = BASE − (D × σ), with D the deviation setting.

Because the distance is measured in the instrument’s own volatility, the channel adapts automatically: it widens when bars are large and contracts when they are small. That is also why a band touch is not a fixed distance — the same touch means something different in a quiet session than in a violent one.

In MQL5 the call is iBands(symbol, period, bands_period, bands_shift, deviation, applied_price) and it returns a handle to three buffers: BASE_LINE (0), UPPER_BAND (1) and LOWER_BAND (2). applied_price is a full ENUM_APPLIED_PRICE argument, so the bands are not fixed to closing prices. John Bollinger introduced the construction in the early 1980s.

Señales

Las señales distintivas y testeables que ofrece Bollinger Bands — y el régimen adecuado para cada una.

Band Touch

Listo en Builder

Condición: Price reaches or closes beyond the upper or lower band
Mejor régimen: Ranging markets
Uso típico: Fade back toward the middle band — with a trend filter

Squeeze

Lógica avanzada

Condición: Band width contracts to a local minimum
Mejor régimen: Pre-breakout
Uso típico: Prepare for expansion without predicting the direction

Middle-Band Cross

Listo en Builder

Condición: Price crosses the base line
Mejor régimen: Either regime
Uso típico: Take profit on a fade, or flip bias in a trend

Band Walk

Lógica avanzada

Condición: Price rides the outer band for consecutive bars
Mejor régimen: Strong trends
Uso típico: Recognise when fading the band is the wrong trade

Implementación en MT5

Lo que MetaTrader 5 calcula y dibuja realmente: la referencia de cada regla de esta página.

Búferes

Índice	Búfer	Dibujado en MT5 como	Qué contiene
0	BASE_LINE	Line	The middle band — a simple moving average of the applied price over the chosen period. Everything else is measured from it.
1	UPPER_BAND	Line	Middle band plus the deviation multiplier times the standard deviation of the same window.
2	LOWER_BAND	Line	Middle band minus the same distance. Upper and lower are always symmetric around the base line.

Notas de la plataforma

Función MQL5

iBands

Precio aplicado

Close Close · Open · High · Low · Median · Typical · Weighted

En el Builder

The Builder's Bollinger node exposes period, deviation and applied price (BB_Price) as EA inputs and passes them to iBands, and a Band selector picks which of the three buffers the node reads.

Notas de implementación

iBands publishes three buffers from one handle, so a rule that needs both outer bands reads buffer 1 and buffer 2 of the same indicator — the Builder does this with two Bollinger nodes set to different bands.
Comparing price to a band needs a Price node as the other side of the Compare; a band on its own is a level, not a condition.
Band width — the squeeze read — is upper minus lower, which the node palette does not expose as a single value, so squeeze detection needs custom MQL5 or a Standard Deviation node as a proxy.

Funciona mejor / usar con cuidado

Ningún indicador tiene ventaja universal. Aquí es donde Bollinger Bands ayuda — y donde engaña.

Funciona mejor

Ranging markets
Comparing volatility across instruments
With a trend or momentum filter
On liquid pairs with steady sessions

Usar con cuidado

Strong one-way trends
Band touches as standalone entries
Very tight deviation settings
Optimised width without validation

Crear una estrategia Bollinger Bands

Conecta la señal a las reglas de entrada y salida, luego exporta un EA MT5 compilable — sin código.

Lower band (20, 2.0)
Upper band (20, 2.0)
Bid at or below lower band → Open Buy · SL 40 / TP 80
Bid at or above upper band → Open Sell

Combinar Bollinger Bands con otros indicadores

Un indicador raramente se sostiene solo. Estas combinaciones cubren los puntos ciegos de Bollinger Bands.

Bollinger Bands + OBV

Price crosses the upper band
OBV above its value 20 bars ago
Buy

Por qué: Trade the break rather than the fade, and require that the running volume total agrees — a band break nobody follows is the classic false breakout
Mejor régimen: Breakout

Crear esta estrategia →

Bollinger Bands + Stochastic

Bid at or below lower band
Stochastic %K < 20
Buy

Por qué: Require a bounded momentum extreme at the same moment as the band touch, so a single stretched bar is not enough to open a trade
Mejor régimen: Ranging

Crear esta estrategia →

Bollinger Bands + RSI

Price at lower band
RSI < 30
Buy

Por qué: Confirm a band touch with an oversold or overbought reading for a stronger exhaustion case
Mejor régimen: Range / reversal

No single-flow template pairs Bollinger Bands with RSI — the Bollinger Bounce template trades band touches only, despite what its description says. Add an RSI node and a Compare to it.

Abrir el Builder →

Bollinger Bands + ADX

ADX < 20
Price at lower band
Buy

Por qué: Suppress the fade while a real trend is running, which is exactly when band touches keep coming and keep losing
Mejor régimen: Range filtering

No single-flow template pairs Bollinger Bands with ADX. Add an ADX node with a Compare below 20 into an And gate ahead of the entry.

Abrir el Builder →

Bollinger Bands + Donchian Channel

Price crosses the upper band
Price clears the 20-bar high
Buy

Por qué: The other channel on this site, and the one that shows what these bands actually are. Bollinger's edges are a mean plus and minus a multiple of deviation — statistics that move every bar and widen with volatility. Donchian's are the raw extremes of the last N bars, so they hold flat and step. Requiring both to break at once asks for price leaving a statistical envelope and setting a genuine N-bar record in the same move, which neither drawing establishes alone
Mejor régimen: Breakout

No single-flow template combines them. Start from Donchian 20-Bar Break, add a Bollinger node set to the upper output with a Price node into a Compare, then join that to the existing Cross with an And gate.

Abrir el Builder →

Parámetros

Valores iniciales para validar en tu propio par y temporalidad — no son configuraciones garantizadas.

Parámetro	Valor predeterminado	Rango de prueba sugerido	Qué hace
Period	20	10–50	Window for both the middle-band average and the deviation. Shorter bands hug price and touch constantly; longer bands only flag real extremes.
Deviation	2	1.5–3.0	How many standard deviations the outer bands sit from the base line. Lower means more touches and more false ones; higher means rarer, more meaningful stretches.
Applied price	Close	Close / Open / High / Low / Median / Typical / Weighted	Price series the average and deviation are computed on. Close is the default; iBands accepts any ENUM_APPLIED_PRICE value.
Band	Lower / Upper	—	Which buffer a rule reads: BASE_LINE, UPPER_BAND or LOWER_BAND. This is a buffer selector, not a numeric setting.

Ajustes preestablecidos iniciales

Tight 20 / 1.5 More touches, more noise

Standard 20 / 2 Bollinger's default baseline

Wide 20 / 2.5 Rarer, more extreme stretches

Ejemplos de mercado

Dónde Bollinger Bands funciona, dónde falla y cómo un filtro cambia el resultado.

Funciona

Fade that worked

In a range price stretches to the lower band, stalls, and returns to the middle band — the mean-reversion case the bands describe.

Falla

Band walk in a trend

In a strong move price rides the upper band for bar after bar. Selling each touch fights the trend and pays for the privilege.

Filtrado

Filtered by regime

Add a trend-strength filter and the same run of upper-band touches is ignored while the move continues — the filter decides whether a touch is an extreme or just a trend.

Indicadores relacionados

Moving Average Ver guía →

ATR Ver guía →

Stochastic Ver guía →

Envelopes Ver guía →

FAQ

Does a touch of the upper band mean sell?: No. A touch means price is two standard deviations from its own 20-bar average — in a range that is stretched, in a trend it is normal and can persist for weeks. Use the touch as context and confirm with momentum, structure, or a regime filter before acting.
What is a Bollinger squeeze?: A local minimum in the distance between the two outer bands, meaning realised volatility has compressed. It says a move is being stored, not which way it will break. Because iBands has no band-width buffer, an EA has to compute upper minus lower itself, or use Standard Deviation as a stand-in.
Should I change the period or the deviation?: They do different things. The period sets what counts as 'the average' and how fast the channel adapts; the deviation sets how far price must travel to be called extreme. Change one at a time in a backtest — moving both at once makes the result impossible to attribute.
Can Bollinger Bands be built on a price other than the close?: Yes. iBands takes an ENUM_APPLIED_PRICE argument, so the bands can be built from Open, High, Low, Median, Typical or Weighted price. Close is the default and the usual choice; Typical price folds in the bar's range and gives a marginally steadier channel on wick-heavy instruments.
Can I build a Bollinger EA without coding?: Yes for band touches and middle-band crosses. The Bollinger Bounce template wires two band nodes against a Price node with period, deviation and applied price as EA inputs. Squeeze detection and band-walk recognition are the exceptions — both need a value iBands does not publish.
How should I validate settings before going live?: Backtest on quality tick data first, then run the EA on a demo account before risking money. When optimising, hold back data the search never saw and prefer settings that stay profitable across periods over the single in-sample peak — chasing that peak is overfitting the noise. No default or preset here is a performance promise; every value is a starting point to re-validate on your own pair and broker.

Glossary

Términos clave

Volatilidad Backtest Sobreajuste