The Trader's Cheat Sheet is a list of 50 commonly used technical indicators with the price projection for the next trading day that will cause each of the signals to be triggered.
The Trader's Cheat Sheet is updated for the next market session upon receiving a settlement or end of day record for the current market session.
The Cheat Sheet is based on end-of-day prices and intended for the current trading session if the market is open, or the next trading session if the market is closed. Please note that the Cheat Sheet page can reflect ahead of the pivot points that display on the chart. The Cheat Sheet updates when it receives a settlement price at the end of the trading session. The chart has no way to know if a market is settled, so it only updates upon receiving a price for the next session.
The projected trigger prices of the signals are listed from highest price at the top of the page to lowest price at the bottom. These are shaded in blue if the common interpretation of the signal is bullish, and shaded in red if the common interpretation of the signal is bearish.
Each projection on the ladder can be examined to determine if the price change to each trigger level will tend to confirm or reverse the price move. This legend can be found at the bottom of the Cheat Sheet page:
- Blue areas below the Last Price will tend to provide support to limit the downward move.
- Red areas above the Last Price will tend to provide resistance to limit the upward move.
- Blue areas above the Last Price will tend to provide support to confirm the upward move.
- Red areas below the Last Price will tend to provide resistance to confirm the downward move.
The complete Cheat Sheet can be used to give an indication of market timing. Blue below the current price and red above will tend to keep trading in a narrow band, whereas blue above the current price, or red below can produce a breakout where each new price level is confirmed by a new signal.
Some of these signals, such as Fibonacci Retracements, have a fixed bullish or bearish interpretation. Others, such as crossovers of a short-term and a long-term moving average, are interpreted as a reversal of the current signal.
Some of these projections will produce trigger prices so far removed from the price action that they can be ignored. The closer the trigger price to the current price, the more quickly it will come into play. A price projection of 0.00 is valid for a technical indicator if the calculation determines it will be impossible to trigger the signal.
Barchart defines the 14-Day %K Stochastic Stalls as follows:
- Value1 = (3 times %K Stochastic - 2 times Raw Stochastic)
- Value2 = (14-Day Highest high minus the 14-Day Lowest low) / 100.0
- Stall = (Value1 * Value2) + 14-Day Lowest Low
Barchart defines the 14-Day %D Stochastic Stalls as follows:
- Value1 = (3 times %D Stochastic - 2 times %K Stochastic)
- Value2 = (14-Day Highest high minus the 14-Day Lowest low) / 100.0
- Stall = (Value1 * Value2) + 14-Day Lowest Low
Support and Resistance / Pivots
We show four separate pivot points (2 Support Levels, and 2 Resistance Points). The Last Price shown is the last trade price at the time the quote page was displayed, and will not update every 10 seconds (as the Last Price at the top of the Quote page does). The Last Price will update only when the page is refreshed.
Pivot points are used to identify intraday support, resistance and target levels. The pivot point and its support and resistance pairs are defined as follows, where H, L, C are the current day's high, low and close, respectively. Support and Resistance points are based on end-of-day prices and are intended for the current trading session if the market is open, or the next trading session if the market is closed.
- Pivot Point: (PP) = (H + L + C) / 3
- 1st Resistance Level: (R1) = (2 * PP) - L
- 2nd Resistance Level: (R2) = PP + (R1 - S1)
- 3rd Resistance Level: (R3) = H + (2 * (PP - L))
- 1st Support Level: (S1) = (2 * PP) - H
- 2nd Support Level: (S2) = PP - (R1 - S1)
- 3rd Support Level: (S3) = L - (2 * (H - PP))
Moving Averages
The moving average periods shown on the cheat sheet (9, 18, 40) were popular with floor traders back in the day. These moving averages are the calculated price which the underlying symbol needs to reach for the price to be considered "above the moving average." These figures are not available on a chart.
Standard Deviation
Standard Deviation, which is a measure of past volatility, provides a mathematical possibility of trading range based on the mean values. These are useful in providing statistically important support and resistance levels.
Standard deviation is calculated using the closing price over the past 5-periods. To calculate standard deviation:
- Step 1: Average = Calculate the average closing price over the past 5-days.
- Step 2: Difference = Calculate the variance from the Average for each Price.
- Step 3: Square the variance of each data point.
- Step 4: Sum of the squared variance value.
- Step 5: For Standard Deviation 2 multiple the result by 2. For Standard Deviation 3 multiple the result by 3.
- Step 6: Divide the result by the number of data points in the series less 1.
- Step 7: The final result is the Square root of the result of Step 6.
Price 1 Standard Deviation provides a possible trading range around 68% of the time. So it is anticipated that roughly 2 out of 3 times the market will stay within Price 1 Standard Deviation support and resistance range for the next trading session, and only 1 out of 3 days will the market move outside of the support or resistance levels.
Price 2 Standard Deviation provides a possible trading range around 95% of the time. So it is anticipated that roughly once a month the market will move outside of this range.
Price 3 Standard Deviation provides a possible trading range around 99.7% of the time. So it is anticipated that less than once a year the market will move outside of this range.
My Barchart members have the option to export the data to an Excel spreadsheet or as a .csv file.
Note: A security needs to have at least 5 days of trading activity in order to generate a Trader's Cheat Sheet.
Barchart Symbol Notes Tutorial (8:43)
