Trend Engine

The trend engine decides the one thing every candle on your chart broadcasts: whether the market reads long or short right now. This page explains how that direction is computed, why it can flip on a single candle, and how indecision is painted.

The SSL Channel

At its core, the trend is an SSL channel: a simple moving average of the highs and a simple moving average of the lows, both over the Trend Speed period (default 10).

• Close above the SMA of highs — the trend flips to up, and candles appear neon green.
• Close below the SMA of lows — the trend flips to down, and candles appear neon red.
• Close inside the channel — the trend remains unchanged.

Trend Speed is the most influential trend setting. Lower values switch faster and hug price; higher values switch later and ride through more noise. The default of 10 is tuned for intraday chart timeframes from 1 to 15 minutes.

The Range-Breakout Quick Switch

Moving averages lag. To keep the color honest during fast moves, the engine adds a quick switch: when a candle closes beyond the last three highs, the trend flips up immediately, even if the close has not yet cleared the SMA of highs. A close below the last three lows flips it down the same way.

This is what keeps the chart from staying red halfway up a vertical rally while the averages catch up.

Only Decisive Candles May Flip The Trend

A candle whose body is less than 30 percent of its range is indecisive, and indecisive candles are not allowed to change the trend — not through the SSL channel and not through the quick switch. A long-wicked doji poking through the channel is noise, not a regime change, and the engine treats it that way.

The 30 percent line is the same threshold that drives the indecisive body fill below, so what you see and what the engine does always agree.

Pattern-Forced Flips

The pattern engine can overrule the averages entirely. When a reversal pattern confirms on bar close — a Star, Hikkake, Three-Line Strike, Three White Soldiers, Three Black Crows, Piercing Line, Three Outside Up/Down, or Bump and Run — the trend flips to the pattern's direction on that bar instead of waiting several candles for the SMAs to cross.

The reasoning: a confirmed reversal pattern is a statement about direction. If the engine kept painting the old trend color for three more bars, the chart would contradict its own signal.

The Two-Bar Grace Period

An instant flip needs protection from instant whipsaw. For two bars after a pattern-forced flip, the SSL rule is not allowed to flip the trend back against the forced direction as long as price keeps confirming the new side (bullish candles after a bullish force, bearish after a bearish one). If price genuinely rejects the new direction, the grace period does not apply and the trend flips back normally.

Momentum Candles Are Trend Events

Decisive momentum candles get the same treatment as reversal patterns — internally. A candle that closes beyond the prior high or low with a dominant body (at least 60 percent of its range) and real momentum (the close extends at least 0.15 ATR beyond the prior extreme) flips the trend on the spot. These thresholds are fixed; there are no settings for this behavior.

This is not a signal: the candle paints no special color, prints no label, and appears in no series. What you see is the flip itself — a full-bodied candle printing in the new trend color while the averages still point the other way.

Indecisive Candle Fill And The Sticky Trend

Indecisive candles (body below 30 percent) get a contrasting body fill so chop is visible at a glance: a black body in an uptrend, a light gray body in a downtrend. Wicks and borders keep the trend color, so you always know which side the engine is on even while it pauses.

The fill is driven by a sticky trend: a second reading of the trend that only updates on decisive candles and freezes during indecision. That is why a string of indecisive candles keeps a consistent fill instead of flickering between black and gray — the sticky trend holds the last decisive direction until either a decisive candle or a pattern-forced flip resets it.

One indecisive candle is a pause. Many in a row are chop, and the honest reading of chop is to stand aside. See Reading The Chart for the visual summary.

Settings

Everything in this page lives in one settings group:

Group 2 — Standard Trend

The momentum-candle trend flip has no inputs — its thresholds are fixed in the engine. The full list of settings is in the Settings Reference.

For Backtesters

The live trend direction is exposed in the TradingView Data Window as a -1/+1 series, alongside the pattern states. All trend decisions are made on bar close and do not repaint intrabar. See Backtesting And Data Window.