I just wrote a little abstract about the subject since I want to get into testing channels of that kind in summer. My thoughts are basically:
1. key point is the starting point of the channel. Since I want to completely atomize the process, i need to define that sharply. It is not as easy as to say "take the high or low of the last x days as a starting point", since one major strength of the idea is that the channel is flexible in its length.
MA crossovers do not help either, since they are either too late when you take two longer MAs or cross over to often if you take short MAs.
We might use some kind of advanced statistic to define bottoms and hills in historic prices.
2. I would like to calculate a regression line from the recent extreme (found in 1.) to the most recent price. I would like to make two additional, parallel lines to this regression line, one up and one down. These are the channel borders. I want to allow them to have different distance to the regression line, by drawing them at the distance where the number of outliers (which is a parameter) is the same for each side.
3. now at any point of time I have the channel, describing behavior since most recent extreme value. The channel has three main features: length, slope and width. Now the shape of the channel can go into a pattern recognition system, which waits for a specific shape to appear. For example a narrow downsloped channel with a length of more than x. If the upper channel border is broken a long trade is executed.
4. since the source of the whole thing lies in 1., where the starting point is defined, it is possible to calculate channels with different length, by looking for other starting points. This means that I can apply two different channels at any point of time. The longer one gives me the big picture, eg US stocks are still in a downward channel, whereas the short channel gives me most recent description of events, eg we had an upward channel of several weeks. Now I can use the longer picture as a filter and only take short-signals from the short channel.
These are the basic ideas. It is not easy to test, so it will take some time. comments appreciated.
peace