Indicator catalog
Sixty indicators, written out properly
60 studies across trend, momentum, volatility and volume. Each one gets an original explanation — the calculation in words, the parameters that actually matter, the readings people take from the plot, and where the whole thing falls apart — printed beside a live chart with the indicator running on it.
Free to read · No account · Our own explanations of public techniques
The same six parts, sixty times
Reference material is only useful when it is predictable. Every indicator in the catalog is documented to an identical structure, so once you have read one page you know exactly where to look on the next.
A live chart
The study loaded on real data at the top of the page. Change the symbol, change the timeframe, and watch the line do what the text says it does.
How it works
What the indicator measures and why anyone bothered to build it, in a few paragraphs of plain prose rather than a formula dump.
The calculation
The arithmetic stated in words. Not pseudocode — the actual operations, in the order they happen, so you could rebuild it in a spreadsheet.
The inputs
Every parameter, the value most packages ship with, and what genuinely changes when you move it away from that default.
How to read it
Signal on the left, what it implies on the right. The readings practitioners actually take, not a list of every possible crossing.
Limitations
Where it lags, what it repaints, which regime destroys it. Every indicator has failure modes and burying them helps nobody.
Find the one you need
Filter by family, by whether it draws on price or in its own panel, and by level. Search covers the name, the abbreviation and the one-line summary, so you can look an indicator up by what it does when the name escapes you.
60 indicators in the catalog
- TrendOverlay
Simple Moving AverageSMA
Answers the most basic question on any chart: what has the average traded price been over the last N bars, and is the market above or below it now?
BeginnerOpen entry - TrendOverlay
Exponential Moving AverageEMA
Answers the same question as a simple average but gives today more of a vote than last month: where is the trend right now?
BeginnerOpen entry - TrendOverlay
Weighted Moving AverageWMA
Answers where the trend sits when recent bars are given proportionally more say than older ones, on a window that forgets everything beyond its edge.
BeginnerOpen entry - TrendOverlay
Hull Moving AverageHMA
Answers whether the trend has turned, with most of the lag of a conventional average engineered out — at the cost of a line that can overshoot.
IntermediateOpen entry - TrendOverlay
Moving Average Ribbon
Answers whether every timeframe agrees: are the short, medium and long averages fanned out in order, or tangled together with no consensus?
IntermediateOpen entry - TrendOscillator
Moving Average Convergence DivergenceMACD
Answers whether the trend is gaining or losing force by measuring the distance between a fast and a slow exponential moving average.
BeginnerOpen entry - TrendOverlay
Supertrend
Answers a single binary question with a single line: given how volatile this market currently is, are we in an uptrend or a downtrend, and where does that call flip?
IntermediateOpen entry - TrendOverlay
Parabolic SARSAR
Answers where a trailing stop should sit today if you assume the trend must keep making progress or be abandoned — and it tightens that stop the longer the trend runs.
IntermediateOpen entry - TrendOverlay
Ichimoku CloudIchimoku
Answers trend, support, resistance and momentum in one picture: where is price relative to equilibrium now, where was it relative to the past, and where is the market projecting equilibrium to be?
AdvancedOpen entry - TrendOscillator
Average Directional IndexADX / DMI
Answers the question every other trend tool assumes away: is there a trend here at all, and how strong is it — regardless of direction?
IntermediateOpen entry - TrendOscillator
Aroon
Answers how recently the market made its highest high and its lowest low — a measure of trend freshness rather than trend size.
IntermediateOpen entry - TrendOscillator
Vortex IndicatorVI
Answers which side is winning the tug of war between upward and downward price movement, by comparing how far the market travels up from prior lows against how far it falls from prior highs.
AdvancedOpen entry - TrendOverlay
Linear Regression Channel
Answers what a straight-line trend through the last N bars looks like, and how far price normally strays from it before coming back.
IntermediateOpen entry - TrendOverlay
McGinley Dynamic
Answers where the trend line should sit when the smoothing speed itself adapts to how fast price is moving away from it.
AdvancedOpen entry - TrendOscillator
TRIX
Answers whether a heavily smoothed version of price is still accelerating, by plotting the one-bar rate of change of a triple exponential average.
AdvancedOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Relative Strength IndexRSI
How large have recent up moves been compared with recent down moves, expressed on a fixed 0-100 scale?
BeginnerOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Stochastic OscillatorStoch
Where does the current close sit inside the high-low range of the last N bars, near the top or near the bottom?
BeginnerOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Stochastic RSIStochRSI
Where does the current RSI sit inside its own recent range — is momentum stretched relative to how stretched it has recently been?
IntermediateOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Williams %R%R
How far below the highest high of the last N bars is the current close, measured as a percentage of the whole range?
BeginnerOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Commodity Channel IndexCCI
How far is price from its own recent average, measured in units of its typical deviation from that average?
IntermediateOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Rate of ChangeROC
What percentage has price gained or lost over exactly the last N bars?
BeginnerOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
MomentumMOM
How many points has price gained or lost over the last N bars, in the instrument's own units?
BeginnerOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Awesome OscillatorAO
Is short-term market drive stronger or weaker than the longer-term drive, measured on the midpoint of each bar?
BeginnerOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Ultimate OscillatorUO
What does buying pressure look like across three different timeframes at once, blended into a single bounded reading?
AdvancedOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Relative Vigor IndexRVI
How much of each bar's range ends up in the body — do closes finish far from their opens, and in which direction?
IntermediateOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Chande Momentum OscillatorCMO
Over the last N bars, how lopsided has the balance between total gains and total losses been?
IntermediateOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Connors RSICRSI
Combining short-term momentum, the length of the current up or down streak, and how unusual today's return is, how stretched is this market really?
AdvancedOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Fisher Transform
If price positions were reshaped so that extremes stood out sharply instead of blending into the middle, where would today's price sit?
AdvancedOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Coppock Curve
On a long horizon, has the pace of decline in a broad index finally stopped getting worse?
IntermediateOpen entry - MomentumOscillator
Know Sure ThingKST
What does momentum look like when four different time horizons are smoothed and blended into one weighted line?
AdvancedOpen entry - VolatilityOverlay
Bollinger BandsBB
How far has price stretched from its recent average, measured in units of the market's own recent volatility?
BeginnerOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Bollinger BandWidthBBW
How wide is the volatility envelope right now compared with its own history on this instrument?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Bollinger %b%b
Where does the current close sit inside the volatility envelope, on a scale where zero is the lower band and one is the upper?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Average True RangeATR
How much ground does this instrument typically cover in one bar, including the gaps between bars?
BeginnerOpen entry - VolatilityOverlay
Keltner Channels
Where does price sit relative to a trend-following average, with the channel width set by true range rather than by dispersion of closes?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolatilityOverlay
Donchian Channels
What are the highest high and the lowest low of the last N bars, and is price breaking out of that range?
BeginnerOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Historical VolatilityHV
How volatile has this instrument actually been, expressed as the annualised percentage figure that options pricing uses?
AdvancedOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Relative Volatility IndexRVI
Is volatility expanding more on up bars or on down bars, and therefore which side is doing the forceful trading?
AdvancedOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Choppiness IndexCHOP
Is the market travelling efficiently in one direction, or covering the same ground repeatedly inside a range?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Mass Index
Is the daily trading range expanding in the way that typically precedes a reversal, regardless of which way price is currently going?
AdvancedOpen entry - VolatilityOverlay
Standard Error Bands
How well does a straight-line fit describe the recent trend, and how far is price scattering around that line?
AdvancedOpen entry - VolatilityOverlay
Moving Average Envelopes
How far above or below its moving average does this market normally trade, expressed as a fixed percentage?
BeginnerOpen entry - VolatilityOverlay
ATR Trailing Stop
Where should a stop sit so that it survives normal noise but still exits when the move genuinely breaks?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Volatility Squeeze
Has volatility compressed to the point where an expansion is statistically likely, and has it started to release?
Intermediate· No built-in studyOpen entry - VolatilityOscillator
Average Day RangeADR
How far does this instrument typically travel between its high and low in a single session, and how much of that has today already used?
Beginner· No built-in studyOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Volume
How much trading actually took place during each bar, so a price move can be judged against the participation behind it.
BeginnerOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
On-Balance VolumeOBV
Over time, has volume been piling up on the bars that closed higher or on the bars that closed lower?
BeginnerOpen entry - VolumeOverlay
Volume Weighted Average PriceVWAP
What has the average participant actually paid since the session began, and is the current price above or below that?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolumeOverlay
Volume Weighted Moving AverageVWMA
Where does the moving average sit once each bar counts in proportion to how much was traded in it?
BeginnerOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Accumulation/Distribution LineA/D
Within each bar, did the close settle near the high or near the low — and how much volume backed that outcome?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Chaikin Money FlowCMF
Over the last N bars, what share of all the volume traded belonged to bars that closed in the upper half of their range?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Chaikin Oscillator
Is the flow of money into or out of an instrument accelerating or decelerating right now?
AdvancedOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Money Flow IndexMFI
Does the overbought and oversold picture change when each price move is weighted by the money that changed hands?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Price Volume TrendPVT
How much volume has flowed in or out once each bar counts in proportion to the size of its move, not just its direction?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Ease of MovementEOM
How much volume did it take to move the price, and is the market travelling cheaply or grinding?
AdvancedOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Klinger OscillatorKVO
Is the long-term trend of money flowing through an instrument diverging from its short-term flow?
AdvancedOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Elder's Force IndexEFI
How much force was behind the latest bar, combining the direction of the move, its size and the volume that produced it?
IntermediateOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Net Volume
For this bar on its own, how much volume fell on the up side minus the down side?
BeginnerOpen entry - VolumeOscillator
Volume Oscillator
Is current trading activity running above or below its own recent normal, expressed as a percentage?
BeginnerOpen entry - VolumeOverlay
Volume Profile
Where in price, rather than in time, did all of that volume actually trade?
Advanced· No built-in studyOpen entry
- Trend15
Direction and persistence: which way the market is leaning and whether it is still leaning that way.
- Momentum15
Rate of change: how fast price is moving and whether that speed is building or fading.
- Volatility15
Dispersion: how wide the range is now compared with its own recent history.
- Volume15
Participation: how much was traded behind a move, and on which side.
About these write-ups. Every explanation, calculation note and limitation in this catalog was written by us. These are long-established public techniques, and no author's script, code or wording has been copied to describe them. The charts are a different matter: they are TradingView's Advanced Chart widget loading TradingView's own built-in studies, which is why each page shows the indicator on live market data rather than a screenshot. A few entries describe techniques with no built-in equivalent; those pages say so plainly and show a plain chart.
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