Plain-English guides to technical indicators, settings, chart behavior, and practical trading rules for trend following and breakout strategies.
Parabolic SAR is a trend-following indicator that plots a series of dots above or below price. SAR stands for “stop and reverse,” which describes its original purpose: it acts like…
The Supertrend indicator is a volatility-based trend overlay that tries to keep you on the right side of sustained moves. It draws a single line that sits below price in…
Ichimoku Cloud is a multi line indicator designed to show trend direction and trend quality at a glance. It does this by combining two fast and slow midpoints, a lagging…
An indicator does not need to be complex to be useful. The Gann HiLo Activator is a good example: it is built from two simple moving averages, yet it can…
The Alligator Indicator is a trend timing tool popularized by Bill Williams. It overlays three smoothed moving averages on price, then shifts each average forward by a fixed number of…
A moving average crossover is one of the simplest ways traders try to separate trend from noise. You plot two moving averages on the same chart, a faster one that…
A Moving Average Ribbon is not a single indicator line. It is a group of moving averages plotted together, usually from fast to slow periods, so you can see trend…
A Moving Average Envelope is a pair of bands plotted at a fixed distance above and below a moving average. Think of it as a simple channel that rides the…
The Average Directional Index (ADX) is a trend strength indicator. It answers one narrow question: how strong is the current trend, regardless of whether the trend is up or down.…
Directional Movement Index (DMI) is one of those indicators that looks more complicated than it is. You see two lines moving around each other, sometimes crossing, sometimes separating, and traders…