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A failed breakout is one of the most common and profitable setups in Al Brooks' price action framework. Price breaks a level, can't follow through, and snaps back — trapping the breakout traders and handing a high-probability entry to the other side. Al Brooks price action is a trading methodology; the logic below is implemented in our own original code.
What is a failed breakout?
A breakout is only a success if it travels far enough to bank at least a small profit. If price pokes past a level — a swing high, range edge, or trend line — and then closes back inside within a bar or two, the breakout has failed. That reversal back through the level is the failed breakout.
Why is a failure itself a signal?
When a breakout fails, the traders who entered on it are now trapped and must exit, which pushes price the other way. In Al Brooks' framework a failed setup is a tradable signal in the opposite direction. This is why fading failed breakouts at the edges of a trading range is often higher-probability than trading the breakout itself.
What is a "failed failure" (breakout pullback)?
Sometimes a failed breakout itself fails — price resumes the original breakout direction. This "failed failure" is a breakout pullback, and because it is a second attempt, it is often more reliable than the first breakout. Each failure quietly creates a candidate setup in the opposite direction.
How does MyTrading help you spot them?
The Al Brooks indicator measures whether a breakout earned a scalp, flags tight ranges where breakouts usually fail, and tracks the second-entry counts that turn a failure into a clean setup. It keeps the context — trend or range — front and center.
Start using it
Open the Al Brooks price action indicator, or see the full Al Brooks trading journal. Project targets with the measured move calculator.
This article explains Al Brooks' price-action concepts in our own words and does not reproduce any book text or images. Last updated: 2026-06.