Indicators and overlays

Indicators summarise price into something easier to read. Add two or three with a purpose and you gain clarity; add ten and you get indicator soup.

Open the indicator picker from the chart toolbar, search by name, and add an indicator either onto the price pane (an overlay) or into its own panel below (an oscillator). Free plans run 2 indicators at once, Pro 10, and Premium is unlimited; a single panel holds up to 20.

indicator picker open, searching for an indicator by name

Overlays vs oscillators

Overlays sit on top of price — moving averages, VWAP, Bollinger Bands. Oscillators live in a panel below — RSI, MACD, volume. Pairing one of each keeps the chart readable.

chart with a moving-average overlay on the price pane and an oscillator (RSI or MACD) in a panel below

Moving averages & trend

Smooth price into a trend line; the differences are lag versus responsiveness.

SMA — simple average of the last N closes; smooths noise, slow to turn.
EMA — weights recent prices, so it reacts faster than an SMA.
SMMA (Wilder) — heavier smoothing than EMA; the average used inside RSI and ADX.
WMA — weighted MA with linear weights that emphasise recent bars.
DEMA — double EMA that reduces the lag of a standard EMA.
TEMA — triple EMA; even less lag than DEMA, at the cost of more whipsaw.
HMA (Hull) — very low lag and a smooth curve; trend direction at a glance.
VWMA — volume-weighted MA; higher-volume bars pull it harder.
ALMA — Gaussian-weighted MA; low lag with little overshoot.
KAMA — Kaufman adaptive MA; speeds up in trends, slows in chop.
MAMA — Ehlers MESA adaptive MA; adapts to the dominant cycle, crossovers signal shifts.
T3 (Tillson) — a smoother, more responsive DEMA/TEMA with a volume-factor dial.
VIDYA — Chande's adaptive MA; accelerates when momentum is strong.
ZLEMA — zero-lag EMA that subtracts the EMA's built-in delay.
McGinley Dynamic — self-adjusting MA that auto-steepens in fast markets.
Rainbow MA — nested SMA bands; an expanding fan shows trend, flat bands mean chop.

Bands, envelopes & volatility

Frame price in a range and measure how much it is moving.

Bollinger Bands — ±2 standard deviations around a 20 SMA; bands squeeze before breakouts.
Bollinger %B — where price sits inside the bands (0 = lower, 1 = upper).
Bollinger Bandwidth — band distance; spikes and contractions flag regime change.
Keltner Channel — EMA ± ATR; a smoother alternative to Bollinger Bands.
Donchian Channel — highest high / lowest low over N bars; the classic breakout range.
Envelope — upper and lower bands at a fixed percent offset from an MA.
ATR — average bar size in price units; used for stops and position sizing.
ATR % — ATR as a percentage of price, so you can compare across symbols.
NATR — normalized ATR; scaled for easy cross-asset comparison.
Chaikin Volatility — rate-of-change of the high-low range.
Historical Volatility — annualised standard deviation of returns; risk context.
Standard Deviation — raw volatility of closes, under Bollinger and Z-score work.
Mass Index — detects reversals through expanding then contracting ranges.
Ulcer Index — drawdown depth and duration; pain-weighted volatility.
Choppiness Index — high = sideways and range-bound, low = trending.

Momentum & oscillators

Read the speed and stretch of a move, and spot divergence.

RSI — 0-100 momentum gauge; above 70 overbought, below 30 oversold.
Stochastic — price location inside its recent range; crossovers signal turns.
Stochastic RSI — a stochastic of RSI; more sensitive for spotting extremes.
Connors RSI — blends RSI, streak and rank; tuned for short-term mean reversion.
MACD — difference between two EMAs with a signal line and histogram.
PPO — MACD expressed in percent, comparable across symbols.
PMO — price momentum oscillator; a smoothed, clean trend filter.
Momentum — raw close minus close N bars ago; simple trend / divergence.
ROC — rate of change as a percent; apples-to-apples across assets.
Williams %R — current bar versus recent range, scaled -100 to 0.
CCI — how far price sits from its statistical mean.
CMO — Chande momentum oscillator; RSI-like but symmetric around zero.
MFI — money flow index; RSI weighted by volume for volume-backed extremes.
TSI — true strength index; double-smoothed momentum with a signal line.
Ultimate Oscillator — combines three timeframes; fewer false divergences.
KST — Know Sure Thing; a smoothed ROC composite for long-term momentum.
TRIX — triple-EMA smoothed ROC that filters short-term noise.
Coppock Curve — long-term momentum; a classic for spotting bottoms.
Fisher Transform — normalizes price so turning points become sharp peaks.
Fisher RSI — Fisher transform of RSI; sharper peaks and troughs.
SMI — stochastic momentum index; a centred stochastic, clearer for divergence.
Schaff Trend Cycle — a faster, smoother MACD driven by a cycle.
DPO — detrended price oscillator; removes trend to expose short cycles.
Balance of Power — buyer versus seller strength inside each bar.
Qstick — average close minus open; candle bodies as momentum.
IMI — intraday momentum index; an RSI using open to close.
Awesome Oscillator — 5/34 midprice difference shown as a histogram.
Accelerator Oscillator — rate-of-change of the Awesome Oscillator.
Squeeze Momentum — flags Bollinger inside Keltner, then direction on release.
Chande Forecast Oscillator — gap between price and its regression forecast.
ASI — accumulative swing index; a smoothed swing tally that confirms trend changes.
ADX + DI — trend strength 0-100; +DI/-DI crossovers call direction.
ADXR — smoothed ADX; a steadier trend-strength gauge.
RVI — relative vigor index; close-versus-open strength in the bar range.
Elder Ray — bull and bear power above and below an EMA.

Volume

Gauge the conviction and money flow behind a move.

VWAP — volume-weighted average price from the open; an institutional benchmark.
Session VWAP — daily-reset VWAP anchored at the session open.
Anchored VWAP — VWAP from a bar you pick; great for measuring from an event.
OBV — on-balance volume; a running sum of volume signed by price direction.
A/D Line — accumulation / distribution; volume weighted by close location in the bar.
CMF — Chaikin money flow; the A/D line averaged over N bars.
Chaikin Oscillator — MACD of the A/D line; the momentum of accumulation.
Volume ROC — percent change in volume from N bars ago; spikes mean attention.
Ease of Movement — how effortlessly price moves per unit of volume.
Force Index — price change times volume; direction plus conviction.
Price-Volume Trend — cumulative volume weighted by percent price change.
NVI — negative volume index; tracks days volume drops (“smart money” theory).
PVI — positive volume index; tracks days volume rises (the crowd).
Volume Oscillator — fast versus slow volume MA difference; flags volume turns.
Williams A/D — an alternative A/D using close location versus extremes.
Relative Volume — current volume as a multiple of its typical level; 2x is notable.
Market Facilitation Index — range divided by volume; classifies each bar.

Order flow

Aggressor-side flow, for order-flow traders.

Cumulative Volume Delta — running aggressive-buy minus aggressive-sell size.
Bar Delta — aggressive buy minus aggressive sell volume for the current bar.
Delta % — bar delta as a percentage of bar volume; signed flow intensity.
Herrick Payoff Index — open-interest-weighted price-volume read (volume fallback when OI is missing).

Bill Williams

The Bill Williams toolkit.

Alligator — three shifted MAs (jaw/teeth/lips); spread means trend, tight means sleeping.
Gator Oscillator — visualizes when the Alligator is sleeping versus eating.
Fractals — 5-bar swing highs and lows; structural pivots for trend and S/R.

Pivots & stops

Reference levels and trailing exits.

Pivot Points — prior-session reference levels (PP, R1-R3, S1-S3).
Fibonacci Pivots — pivot levels spaced at 38.2% / 61.8% / 100% of the prior range.
Camarilla Pivots — tight intraday levels (R1-R4 / S1-S4) on the prior range.
Woodie Pivots — a pivot variant that weights the prior close twice.
Supertrend — an ATR-based trailing-stop line that flips green/red with the trend.
Chande-Kroll Stop — an ATR-based trailing stop; the classic volatility trail.
Parabolic SAR — dots flip above/below price; an exit / trend-reversal signal.
ZigZag — connects swing extremes above a percent threshold (repaints until confirmed).

Trend & reference lines

Directional context and fair-value references.

Ichimoku Cloud — trend, support, resistance and momentum in one overlay.
Aroon — bars since the recent high versus low; trend strength and direction.
Vortex — +VI/-VI directional movement from true-range endpoints.
Linear Regression — a moving best-fit line through the last N closes.
Linear Regression Slope — the rate at which the fit line rises or falls.
Linear Regression Channel — regression line ± standard deviation; an objective trend channel.
Median Price — (high + low) / 2, the midprice of each bar.
Typical Price — (high + low + close) / 3, the fair value used inside CCI, MFI and VWAP.

Cycles & randomness

Cycle timing and trend-versus-noise measures.

Random Walk Index — signals trend when movement exceeds a random-walk expectation.
Polarized Fractal Efficiency — path straightness; +100 strong trend, 0 chop.
Inertia — linear-regression smoothed RVI; a slow trend-direction read.
FFT Dominant Cycle — extracts the strongest cycle period in recent data.
MESA Sine Wave — Ehlers cycle indicator; crossovers call turns early.

A clean default setup

Add a moving average (say 50-period) as your trend filter.
Add RSI (14) in a lower panel for momentum.
Turn on volume to confirm breakouts.

clean default setup on a chart — a moving average on price, RSI in a lower panel and volume

An indicator that never changes your decision is just decoration. Keep the ones that do.