Technical Indicators and Overlays

Technical Indicators and Overlays

Technical Indicators are the often squiggly lines found above, below and on-top-of the price information on a technical chart. Indicators that use the same scale as prices are typically plotted on top of the price bars and are therefore referred to as “Overlays”.

If you are new to stock charting and the use of technical indicators, the following article will help you get going:

Technical Overlays

  • Anchored VWAP A version of the VWAP overlay where the chartist defines the starting point for overlay calculations.
  • Bollinger Bands A chart overlay that shows the upper and lower limits of 'normal' price movements based on the Standard Deviation of prices.
  • Chandelier Exit An indicator that can be used to set trailing stop-losses for both long and short positions.
  • Double Exponential Moving Average (DEMA) A faster moving average calculation that offsets values in order to reduce the traditional lag found in moving averages.
  • Hull Moving Average (HMA) - A very responsive moving average calculation that weights recent prices more heavily than those earlier in the period.
  • Ichimoku Cloud A comprehensive indicator that defines support and resistance, identifies trend direction, gauges momentum and provides trading signals.
  • Kaufman's Adaptive Moving Average (KAMA) A unique moving average that accounts for volatility and automatically adjusts to price behavior.
  • Keltner Channels A chart overlay that shows upper and lower limits for price movements based on the Average True Range of prices.
  • Moving Averages Chart overlays that show the 'average' value over time. Both Simple Moving Averages (SMAs) and Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs) are explained.
  • Moving Average Ribbon A quick way to plot several moving averages with different look-back periods on a chart at once.
  • Moving Average Envelopes A chart overlay consisting of a channel formed from simple moving averages.
  • Parabolic SAR A chart overlay that shows reversal points below prices in an uptrend and above prices in a downtrend.
  • Pivot Points A chart overlay that shows reversal points below prices in an uptrend and above prices in a downtrend.
  • Price Channels A chart overlay that shows a channel made from the highest high and lowest low for a given period of time.
  • Triple Exponential Moving Average (TEMA) A more responsive moving average indicator which significantly reduces the lag present in traditional moving average calculations.
  • Volume By Price A chart overlay with a horizontal histogram showing the amount of activity at various price levels.
  • Volume-Weighted Average Price (VWAP) An intraday indicator based on total dollar value of all trades for the current day divided by the total trading volume for the current day.
  • ZigZag A chart overlay that shows filtered price movements that are greater than a given percentage.

Technical Indicators

We also have a large collection of Market Indicators documented on this page.