A volume confirmed channel breakdown / breakout alert occurs when a stock transitions directly from a consolidating state to a running state.  See the definitions of the consolidation alert, and the running up / down (confirmed) alerts for more details.

A consolidation does not always end in a channel breakdown or breakout alert.  If the stock price moves just slightly outside of the range of the consolidation, the software may just increase the size of the channel.  In this case another consolidation alert will eventually occur, but it will be labeled as "decaying".  Alternatively, the stock price can move far enough outside of the channel that the stock in no longer consolidating.  If it does so slowly enough, no alerts will occur.  These alerts only occur when the stock price moves quickly enough to be interesting.

These alerts require a certain combination of volume and price action for confirmation.  This is required by the way we report consolidations.  The top and the bottom of the channel are based on the price of most of the prints, but some prints will be outside of the channel.  Therefore, an alert does not occur every time a single print is outside of the channel.  An alert only occurs when there is a recognizable pattern of price, time, and volume.

In the past, "channel breakout" and "channel breakdown" appeared in the description of running up / down (confirmed) alerts.  Now these alerts have their own alert type, so a user may enable or disable these separately from the running alerts.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.