Three-horizon KST maturity alignment

Stacked cycles on one weekly chart

Market direction is treated as the interaction of many time cycles, and an important turn is framed as several of those cycles changing direction at once.

Short-span, intermediate-span, and primary-span versions of KST are defined. The three horizons can be plotted together from weekly closes by changing lookbacks instead of mixing daily, weekly, and monthly charts. That shared weekly layout is the cycle-stack.

TradersWeek editorial reading treats the weekly cycle-stack as a three-clock lab. First locate how far the slowest smoothed rate-of-change stack sits from equilibrium. Faster crossovers become a trade hypothesis only after price itself prints a matching moving-average crossover or completed pattern.

How the KST is assembled

KST is a single oscillator formed by weighting and summing four separately smoothed rate-of-change series of different spans. The oscillator is built in three steps: form four rate-of-change series, smooth each with a simple or exponential average, then multiply by the weights 1, 2, 3 and 4 and add the results.

Rate of change is computed as the latest close divided by the close n periods earlier, multiplied by 100, then reduced by 100 so the series is centered on zero.

When exponential smoothing is used, the smoothing constant equals two divided by the lookback plus one.

A short-span weekly specification

The suggested short-span weekly exponential specification uses rate-of-change lengths of 3, 4, 6 and 10 periods, each smoothed by an exponential average of 3, 4, 6 and 8 periods respectively.

Three operational horizons

The three operational horizons are described as two-to-four-week swings watched on daily data, six-week-to-six-month swings on weekly data, and one-to-three-year swings on monthly data. The slowest of those spans is the primary trend.

On the weekly three-horizon layout, the three oscillators still share weekly closes. Only the lookbacks change so short, intermediate, and primary spans can be compared on the same chart.

Crossover cue and price confirmation

A directional cue is generated when the oscillator crosses its designated simple or exponential moving average. A matching price reversal through a moving-average crossover or completed price pattern is still required.

On the weekly three-horizon layout, the short-span series uses an 8-week simple average for the crossover, the intermediate-span series a 10-week average, and the long-span series a 26-week average.

Trend maturity on the long span

A conceptual primary advance is described as three intermediate upswings, and occasionally a fourth. All else equal, the farther the long-span oscillator sits from equilibrium, the more mature that primary swing is treated as being.

TradersWeek editorial practice uses that trend-maturity reading as the first clock. A faster KST moving-average crossover is not treated as a trade hypothesis until the long-span location is in view and price prints the matching reversal.