What is the difference between Keltner Channels and Bollinger Bands?
Bollinger Bands are based on a standard deviation function. Very often, you will see times where the market is moving HIGHER but the lower Bollinger band is declining. This does not happen with Keltner channels. Though both are based on a volatility functions, Keltner Channels will maintain a more constant width than Bollinger Bands and thus we find them more pleasing to our eye. We also have had much better success in using range functions in our quantitative modeling as opposed to standard deviation functions, especially when creating short-term timing systems. Bollinger Band trades we use 2.5 standard deviation bands centered around a 20 period moving average to make trades on the day following a trend day. we do these trades in the morning session only. the concept behind this is that a push to the upper or lower band will setup a countertrend trade. the objective is a push back to the moving average. no stops were used in our testing, we just used an exit of whenever the trade hit
