ATR based Pivots mcbwHey everyone this is an exciting new script I have prepared for you.
I was reading an old forex bulletin article some time ago when I came across this: solar.murty.net (or you can download the full bulletin with lots of other good articles here: www.forexfactory.com).
You can already buy this for metatrader (www.mql5.com) so I figured to make it for free for tradingview.
This bulletin suggested that you can reasonably predict daily volatility by adding or subtracting multiples of the daily ATR to the daily opening. Using this you can choose multiples to use as price targets and alternatively as stop losses. For example, if you already have a sense of market direction you can buy at market open place a stop loss at - 1 daily ATR and a profit target at + 3 ATRs for a risk to reward ratio of 3. If you are looking for smaller/quicker moves with a ratio of 3 you can have a stop loss at -0.25 ATR and a take profit at +0.75 ATR.
Alternatively this article also suggests to use this method to catch volatility breakouts. If price is higher than the + 1 ATR area then you can safely assume it will be going to the +2 ATR area so you can put a buy stop at + 1 ATR with a profit target at + 2 ATR with a stop loss at +0.5 ATR to catch a volatility breakout with a risk to reward ratio of 2!
Even further there are methods that you can use with ATRs of multiple window sizes, for example by opening two copies of this indicator and measuring recent volatility with a 1 week window and long term volatility within a 1 month window. If the short term volatility is crossing the long term volatility then there is a high probability chance that even more price movement will occur.
However I have found that this method is good for more than daily volatility , it can also be used to measure weekly volatility , and monthly volatility and use these multiples as good long term price targets.
To select if you want daily, weekly, or monthly values of the ATR of volatility you're using go to the settings and click on the options in the "Opening period". The default window of the ATR here is 14 periods, but you can change this if you want to in "ATR period". Most importantly you are able to select which multiples of the ATR you would like to use in the settings in "ATR multiple 1" which is the green line, "ATR multiple 2" which is the blue line, and "ATR multiple 3" which is the purple line. You can select any values you want to put in these, the choice of 0.25, 0.5, and 1 is not special, some people use fibonacci numbers here or simply 0.33, 0.66, and 0.99.
Repainting issue: This script uses the daily value of the Average True Range (ATR), which measures the volatility that is happening today. If price becomes more volatile then the value of the ATR can increase throughout the day, but it can never decrease. What this means is that the ATR based pivots are able to expand away from the opening price, which should not affect the trades that you take based on these areas. If you base your take profit on one of these ATR multiples and the daily volatility increase this means that your take profit area will be closer to your entry than the ATR multiple. Meaning that your trades will be more conservative.
While this all may sound very technical it is super intuitive, throw this on your chart and play around with it :)
Happy trading!
