How the trend is calculated
On this page
The trend line on the board is computed from the spot gold or spot silver price (US dollars per ounce) by a fixed, published rule. Nobody is predicting anything, and no one has looked at a chart and formed an opinion.
How the trend is calculated
The Trend Indicator
On Gold Trends, the board says whether the trend is up or down and since when — for example, Trend up since 03:30 pm IST. That line is computed by a fixed rule. The rule is called Supertrend, and it is widely published.
How it works
- The spot price is grouped into 15-minute candles. Each candle records the highest, lowest and last price in its fifteen minutes.
- The average true range measures how far a candle typically moves. It is averaged over the last 10 candles, smoothed the way its inventor, J. Welles Wilder, defined it.
- Two bands are placed around the middle of each candle: 3 times that average above it, and the same distance below.
- The trend is up while the price closes above the lower band, and turns down only when a candle closes below it. It turns back up only when a candle closes above the upper band. The bands only ever move towards the price, never away from it, so a small wobble does not flip the trend back and forth.
- Since 03:30 pm is the candle on which the direction last changed.
How far back it looks
It looks back over the last 3 days of candles. With fewer than 12 candles to work from — a board that started this morning, say — it shows nothing, rather than a trend it cannot yet support.
Why these settings
The settings, 10 and 3, are the conventional defaults for Supertrend. They are not tuned to gold, to this market or to recent prices. Settings picked because they would have fitted the past are a backtest, not a rule.
It describes where the price has been. It is not a forecast, and the trend being up does not mean the price will keep rising.
What this is not
- It is not advice, and it is not a recommendation to do anything.
- It contains no opinion. No analyst has reviewed it, and there is no view being expressed about which way the price will move.
- It uses no private data. It is worked out from the last few days of the spot gold or spot silver price, which is public.
The trend shown on this board is for information only. It is not investment advice, not a solicitation, and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Prices move; a figure shown on the board may not be the price at which any transaction is available. Confirm with the jeweller before acting on anything you read here.