Ripster MTF Breakout — how to read it

Ripster MTF Breakout sits inside the RipsterCloud tab. It scans the same watchlist on the same 10-minute extended-hours bars, with the same 8/9, 5/12 and 34/50 EMA clouds and the same DTR gauge. Only the rule for a buy or sell is different: instead of waiting for a pullback inside a trend, it signals when the fast and slow clouds break out together.

Open Ripster MTF Breakout →

This is a members-only tab. The guide below is free to read; opening the live scanner requires a signed-in paid account.

The idea in one line

The 5/12 cloud shows the short-term direction and the 34/50 cloud the higher-timeframe trend. When both turn the same way at once, the lower and higher timeframes agree, which is what a multi-timeframe breakout means.

When a signal prints

Every rule is checked on a closed 10-minute bar. A buy prints when either of these happens (a sell is the mirror image):

• MTF cross: the 5 EMA crosses above the 12 and the 34 crosses above the 50 within an hour (six bars) of each other, with both clouds still pointing up.
• Cloud cross: the whole 5/12 cloud rises above the whole 34/50 cloud — the lower edge of the fast cloud closes above the upper edge of the slow one.

Only one signal per swing: after a buy, the next buy needs the 5 EMA to cross back below the 12 first. Without that, a fast cloud riding along the edge of the slow one would print the same buy again and again.

The two filter switches

Two switches next to the tab name change which signals print. The backtest pane, the table and the trade ideas are all recalculated with them, and your choice is remembered in your browser.

• Regular hours only (on by default) — only signals that fire between 9:30 and 16:00 ET, when options trade. Pre-market and after-hours crosses happen on thin volume, often while the clouds are flat, and cannot be traded with options. Crypto has no regular session and is not filtered.
• RSI confirm (60/40) (off by default) — a buy also needs RSI(14) above 60, a sell below 40. Over the first 40 sessions the signals with RSI only just past 50 were the weakest; requiring 60/40 improved the average result per trade, though not enough to make the rule profitable on its own.

A signal a filter rejects never prints at all, so it does not use up its swing: the next qualifying cross can still fire.

The trade plan on each signal

• Entry — the close of the signal bar.
• Stop — just past the far side of the 34/50 cloud (a quarter of a 10-minute ATR beyond it). Once price is back through the slow cloud, the breakout has failed. The stop is never closer than half a 10-minute ATR.
• TP1 / TP2 / TP3 — 1, 2 and 3 times the risk (1R, 2R, 3R), drawn as the same trade boxes as the RipsterCloud Scan.
• 100% ATR target — where the day would complete its average range: today's low plus the daily ATR for a buy, today's high minus it for a sell. The ATR is the 14-day average through the previous session, and the target is frozen when the signal fires. If the day has already covered its average range in that direction, the signal has no room left and the tab says so.

The chart draws the newest signal's box and, while its trade is live, its 100% ATR target as a dashed blue line. When no signal is live, the line is the ordinary DTR target, the same as on the RipsterCloud Scan.

The table

• DTR% → target — today's range as a share of the daily ATR, with the full-range target. Green (70% or less) means the day still has room; red (90% or more) means the average range is spent.
• 5/12 and 34/50 — each cloud's direction. The small arrow beside the 34/50 shows the fast cloud sitting entirely above (⇡) or below (⇣) the slow one.
• setup — long pending means the 5/12 has crossed up within the hour and the 34/50 has not followed yet. If it does, that is an MTF cross.
• tp1 · R — from the backtest: the share of this ticker's signals that reached TP1 before the stop, and the average result per trade exiting at TP1.

The backtest

Every signal over roughly the last 60 days of 10-minute bars is replayed as a day trade. It is walked forward bar by bar until it is stopped, reaches TP3 (and the ATR target), or the day ends — at the 16:00 bell for anything that fired before it, or at the end of the evening for an after-hours signal. A bar that touches both the stop and a target counts as the stop. The record keeps updating: each refresh adds the newest signals.

The pane shows results three ways, in R (multiples of the risk):

• Exit at TP1 — +1R if TP1 was reached, −1R if stopped first, otherwise the result at the bell.
• Exit at TP2 — the same with +2R.
• Hold for the 100% ATR target — the target's distance in R if reached, −1R if stopped, otherwise the result at the bell. Only signals that still had room count here.

Each is split by side, by rule (MTF cross or cloud cross), by time of day and by whether the ticker's sector ETF had both clouds pointing the same way. The watchlist row also shows the regular-hours-only result, because signals before 9:30 or after 16:00 cannot be traded with options.

The results are gross, before slippage, commissions and option pricing, and 60 days is one market regime. Treat a small sample, or a result near zero, as no evidence either way.

Trade ideas

For an hour after a signal fires, while its stop holds, the ideas pane turns it into a debit spread in its direction with the short strike at the 100% ATR target (or TP2 when the day has no range left). Crypto gets the plain long or short. Open any idea on the Risk Graph to check it against the live chain.

Related: the original RipsterCloud Scan buys pullbacks inside a 34/50 trend. See every scanner on the Help hub.

Educational content only — nothing on this page is financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Signals are rule-based analytics; backtested and historical results do not guarantee future performance. Markets involve risk. © SPX Lens · About · Help & FAQ