Indicator Academy
33 indicators, including what each one cannot do
Every module gives the formula, the settings that suit each trading style, how to read it in a trend versus a range, a worked example, a worked failure, and the tools it is redundant with.
Simple Moving Average
01The average closing price over a fixed number of completed candles.
Exponential Moving Average
02A weighted average of closes that gives more weight to recent candles.
Weighted Moving Average
03A linearly weighted average: the most recent close carries weight n, the oldest weight 1.
Moving Average Convergence Divergence
04The difference between two EMAs, plus a signal line and a histogram of their gap.
Directional Movement Index with ADX
05Whether a market is trending (ADX) and in which direction (+DI versus −DI).
Parabolic SAR
06A trailing stop-and-reverse level that accelerates toward price as a trend extends.
Ichimoku Kinko Hyo
07Trend, support/resistance and momentum in one framework using midpoints of past ranges.
SuperTrend
08An ATR-based trailing band that flips side when price closes through it.
Linear Regression Channel
09The best-fit straight line through recent closes, with channel lines at a chosen deviation.
Aroon
10How recently the highest high and lowest low of the lookback occurred.
Vortex Indicator
11Upward and downward pressure by comparing candle-to-candle range extensions against true range.
Triple Exponential Average
12The rate of change of a triple-smoothed EMA, designed to strip out short-term noise.
Kaufman Adaptive Moving Average
13A moving average that speeds up in trends and slows down in noise, using an efficiency ratio.
Relative Strength Index
14The ratio of average gains to average losses over n candles, scaled 0–100.
Stochastic Oscillator
15Where the close sits within the high–low range of the last n candles.
Stochastic RSI
16Where RSI sits within its own recent range — a stochastic applied to RSI rather than price.
Commodity Channel Index
17How far the typical price sits from its moving average, in units of mean deviation.
Williams %R
18Where the close sits relative to the n-candle high, on a −100 to 0 scale.
Momentum and Rate of Change
19How far price has moved over a fixed number of candles, in absolute or percentage terms.
Awesome Oscillator
20The difference between a 5- and 34-period simple moving average of candle midpoints.
Ultimate Oscillator
21Momentum across three timeframes at once, to reduce the false divergences of single-period oscillators.
DeMarker
22Demand for the instrument by comparing successive highs and lows, scaled 0–1.
Average True Range
23Average candle range including gaps — the single most useful input to stop placement and sizing.
Bollinger Bands
24A moving average with bands placed a number of standard deviations above and below it.
Bollinger BandWidth
25The width of the Bollinger Bands relative to the middle band — a normalised volatility reading.
Keltner Channels
26An EMA with channel lines placed a multiple of ATR above and below.
Donchian Channels
27The highest high and lowest low of the last n candles, with their midpoint.
Standard Deviation
28The dispersion of closes around their mean over a lookback period.
Chaikin Volatility
29The rate of change of the smoothed high–low spread.
Pivot Points
30Reference support and resistance levels derived from the previous period's high, low and close.
Fibonacci Retracement
31Proportional retracement levels of a measured swing.
Volume Weighted Average Price
32The average price weighted by volume since a session start.
On-Balance Volume
33A running total that adds volume on up-closes and subtracts it on down-closes.
A note on volume. Spot forex is decentralised, so there is no central tape. Indicators marked “tick volume” use the number of price updates from a single broker's feed as a proxy for activity — readings differ between providers and are not traded contract volume.