Sources

The material this reference was built from. The indicator legend below is the list of 95 overlays and oscillators that set the scope of this whole reference.

1. Robinhood — Chart indicators on legendrobinhood.com

   The source list of all 95 chart indicators. Every indicator page here corresponds to an entry in this article; the 95 individual anchor links are listed in full below.

2. Robinhood — Technical indicatorsrobinhood.com

   Companion article on viewing and applying indicators on a Robinhood chart.

3. Robinhood — Key statistics panel

   Supplied as screenshots of a stock's quote page: market cap, P/E ratio, dividend yield, average volume, high/low, open, volume, 52-week high/low, short inventory and borrow rate. No public article URL; the definitions here were checked against general market references.

Consulted when building the candlestick and chart-shape sections — shape descriptions, breakout conventions and the reliability caveats.

1. IG — Top 10 chart patterns every trader needs to knowwww.ig.com

   Head and shoulders, double tops and bottoms, rounding bottom, cup and handle, wedges, flags and pennants, the three triangles.

2. TradingSim — Chart patterns cheat sheetwww.tradingsim.com

   Continuation versus reversal classification, and the note that no pattern carries a guaranteed edge.

3. Strike.money — Chart patternswww.strike.money

   Coverage of the less common shapes: rectangles, broadening formations, diamonds, island reversals, channels.

4. Liberated Stock Trader — Data-proven chart patternswww.liberatedstocktrader.com

   Source of the widely circulated Bulkowski success-rate figures. Cited on the Chart shapes page as folklore-with-data rather than odds.

Used in the accuracy pass over every stated default setting. Where a source contradicted the text, the text was corrected — the Inertia, Kairi, Relative Volatility Index, Negative Volume Index and Average volume entries all changed as a result.

1. StockCharts ChartSchool — Keltner Channelschartschool.stockcharts.com

   Confirmed 20-period EMA, 10-period ATR, multiplier 2, and the contrast with Bollinger Bands.

2. StockCharts ChartSchool — Mass Indexchartschool.stockcharts.com

   Confirmed the 9-period EMA, 25-period sum, and the 27 / 26.5 reversal bulge.

3. StockCharts ChartSchool — Aroonchartschool.stockcharts.com

   Confirmed Chande's 1995 origin, the 25-period default and the 70 / 50 / 30 readings.

4. StockCharts ChartSchool — Force Indexchartschool.stockcharts.com

   Confirmed the 13-period default and Elder's 2-period version for entries.

5. StockCharts ChartSchool — Negative Volume Indexchartschool.stockcharts.com

   Source of the 255-day EMA signal line and Fosback's 96% / 53% bull-and-bear odds, now quoted on the NVI page.

6. thinkorswim Learning Center — Inertiatoslc.thinkorswim.com

   Established that Inertia is a linear regression of the Relative Volatility Index. Corrected an error: the entry previously named the Relative Vigor Index.

7. Tradingpedia — Inertia indicatorwww.tradingpedia.com

   Second confirmation of the same correction, plus the 50-level reading.

8. Tradingpedia — STARC Bandswww.tradingpedia.com

   Confirmed the 6-period SMA centre line and the ×2 ATR multiplier.

9. FMLabs — Relative Volatility Indexwww.fmlabs.com

   Confirmed the 9–10 day standard-deviation window and the 60 / 40 standalone thresholds.

10. LuxAlgo Library — Acceleration Bandswww.luxalgo.com

    Confirmed Price Headley's 20-period construction and the two-consecutive-closes breakout rule.

11. IncredibleCharts — Smoothed Rate of Changewww.incrediblecharts.com

    Confirmed the 13-period EMA into a 21-period rate of change.

12. DXcharts Knowledge Base — Dynamic Momentum Indexdevexperts.com

    Confirmed the variable lookback and the 5-day standard deviation averaged over 10 that drives it.

13. AMT — Kairi Relative Indexamtbalance.com

    Established 10 as the common default period, correcting the 20 previously stated.

Additional pages consulted for single facts.

1. Capital.com — Schaff Trend Cyclecapital.com

   Confirmed the 23 / 50 / 10 settings and the 25 / 75 levels.

2. The Modern Scientist — Understanding the WaveTrend indicatormedium.com

   Confirmed LazyBear's channel 10, average 21, signal 4 and the ±60 / ±53 bands.

3. Stockopedia — Average Volume (3M)www.stockopedia.com

   The three-month convention for average volume on quote pages.

4. BlueChip — How to read the Robinhood stock detailsblog.bluechip.dev

   Indicates Robinhood averages volume over 52 weeks rather than three months — the reason the Average volume entry now says the window is platform-dependent.

Consulted for the Smart Money Concepts page — used to pin down the specific numbers the framework relies on, since educators draw its lines slightly differently.

1. LuxAlgo Library — Optimal Trade Entrywww.luxalgo.com

   Confirmed the 62%–79% retracement band, the 70.5% sweet spot, and how OTE sits inside the discount half of a range.

2. LiteFinance — ICT Killzoneswww.litefinance.org

   The four killzone windows, and the one-hour shift around daylight-saving changes that explains why sources disagree on the exact hours.

3. Strike.money — Order Blockwww.strike.money

   Bullish and bearish order block definitions, and how breaker and mitigation blocks differ from them.

4. Trading Strategy Guides — Inducement and breaker blockstradingstrategyguides.com

   The inducement concept, and the breaker block as a failed order block that flips role after a liquidity sweep.

The research behind the Base rates page and behind every evidence tag on every card. These are the studies that decide whether an entry reads “studied” or “untested”, and they are listed in full so the tags can be checked rather than trusted.

1. Chague, De-Losso & Giovannetti — Day Trading for a Living? (2020)papers.ssrn.com

   Every individual who began day trading Brazilian equity futures 2013–2015. Of those persisting beyond 300 days, 97% lost money; 1.1% earned more than the minimum wage; 0.5% earned more than a bank teller's starting salary. The source of the headline figure on the Base rates page.

2. Barber, Lee, Liu & Odean — The Cross-Section of Speculator Skill, Journal of Financial Markets (2014)papers.ssrn.com

   Taiwan Stock Exchange, 1992–2006, around 450,000 day traders a year. About 20% finish a given year ahead of costs; fewer than 1% are predictably profitable — roughly 4,000 people. The source of the “under 1%” figure.

3. Barber & Odean — Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth, Journal of Finance (2000)papers.ssrn.com

   66,465 US discount-brokerage households, 1991–1996. The average household returned 16.4% a year against a market at 17.9%; the most active fifth returned 11.4%. The source of the turnover chart, and of the cost-drag argument on The math page.

4. Barber, Lee, Liu & Odean — Just How Much Do Individual Investors Lose by Trading?, Review of Financial Studies (2009)papers.ssrn.com

   All Taiwan Stock Exchange trading, 1995–1999. Individuals ran 3.8 percentage points a year behind while all four institutional groups gained; the transfer came to 2.2% of GDP, and nearly all of it traced to individuals' aggressive orders.

5. Barber, Huang, Odean & Schwarz — Attention-Induced Trading and Returns: Evidence from Robinhood Users, Journal of Finance (2022)onlinelibrary.wiley.com

   Average 20-day abnormal return of −4.7% following the top 0.5% of daily herding episodes, and −19.6% over a month for the most extreme. Cited because Robinhood's indicator list is what set this site's scope.

6. Park & Irwin — What Do We Know About the Profitability of Technical Analysis?, Journal of Economic Surveys 21(4): 786–826 (2007)onlinelibrary.wiley.com

   The standard survey of the field: of 95 modern studies, 56 positive, 20 negative, 19 mixed — with the authors' own caveat that most are compromised by data snooping, after-the-fact rule selection and unrealistic cost assumptions. The single most useful reference for calibrating what “studied” is worth.

7. Brock, Lakonishok & LeBaron — Simple Technical Trading Rules and the Stochastic Properties of Stock Returns, Journal of Finance (1992)onlinelibrary.wiley.com

   The paper that made moving-average and trading-range breakout rules respectable to test, on 90 years of the Dow. The reason simple moving averages, EMAs and weighted averages are tagged studied rather than untested.

8. Sullivan, Timmermann & White — Data-Snooping, Technical Trading Rule Performance, and the Bootstrap, Journal of Finance (1999)onlinelibrary.wiley.com

   Re-ran nearly 8,000 trading rules against the same data and showed how much of an apparently strong result is manufactured by the search itself. The basis of the data-snooping question in the numeracy check.

9. Lo, Mamaysky & Wang — Foundations of Technical Analysis, Journal of Finance (2000)onlinelibrary.wiley.com

   Defined head-and-shoulders, inverse head-and-shoulders, broadening, triangle, rectangle and double top and bottom formations precisely enough to detect by algorithm, then tested them. Why those shapes are tagged studied and cup-and-handle, diamonds, wedges and pennants are not.

10. Chang & Osler — Methodical Madness: Technical Analysis and the Irrationality of Exchange-Rate Forecasts, Economic Journal (1999)onlinelibrary.wiley.com

    Tested the head-and-shoulders pattern in currency markets and found it unprofitable for most rates, while traders kept using it. A useful reminder that being tested and being vindicated are different things.

11. Marshall, Young & Rose — Candlestick Technical Trading Strategies: Can They Create Value for Investors?, Journal of Banking & Finance 30(8) (2006)www.sciencedirect.com

    Bootstrap test of candlestick patterns on Dow Jones Industrial Average constituents, 1992–2002. Conclusion: no value for those stocks. This is the study behind the studied tag on the classical candle patterns — the tag records that the question was asked, and the answer was no.

12. Marshall, Young & Cahan — Are Candlestick Technical Trading Strategies Profitable in the Japanese Equity Market?, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting (2008)link.springer.com

    The same test in the market candlesticks came from, with the same result. Included because “it might work in Japan” is the obvious objection to the study above, and it has been checked.

13. Zakamulin — The Real-Life Performance of Market Timing with Moving Average and Time-Series Momentum Rules, Journal of Asset Management (2014)link.springer.com

    Out-of-sample testing of the moving-average and momentum families, finding the historical advantage much weaker than in-sample results suggest. The reason the moving-averages page carries a studied tag and not a recommendation.

14. No published test located

    Everything tagged untested — all eighteen Smart Money Concepts entries, the killzones, optimal trade entry, and the more obscure oscillators and volume tools — was searched for and no peer-reviewed test of the specific claim was found. That is a statement about the literature as it was searched, not proof that none exists; a citation would change the tag.

The three formulas on The math page. All of them are elementary algebra rather than borrowed results, so each is set out here with its derivation and checked against an independent reference.

1. Derived from first principles — not sourced

   Recovering from a loss means (1 − L) × (1 + G) = 1. Solving for G gives G = L ÷ (1 − L), which is the formula shown on the page. No external source was used to obtain it.

2. Cost drag — derived from first principles

   Each round trip is charged on the capital remaining after the last, so N of them leave (1 − c)^N and consume D = 1 − (1 − c)^N. At c = 0.10% and N = 250 that is 22.1%, and by the break-even identity above it takes a 28.4% gross return to finish the year flat.

3. Break-even win rate and streak depth — derived from first principles

   Expected value per trade is p·W − (1 − p)·L; setting it to zero with R = W/L gives p* = 1/(1 + R). Drawdown after k consecutive losses risking r each is 1 − (1 − r)^k, and the probability of k straight losses at an even win rate is 0.5^k. No external source was used for any of the three.

4. Computed, not transcribed

   Every number in every table, every point on every curve and every value in the hover readout is calculated in the page from these identities, so the figures cannot drift from the formulas.

5. Bogleheads — Percentage gain and losswww.bogleheads.org

   Used as an independent check. States the same relationship as (1 + P1) × (1 + P2) − 1 = 0 and gives matching values: 10% needs 11%, 20% needs 25%, 30% needs about 43%, 50% needs 100%.

The indicators collected here were invented by people, mostly between the 1950s and the 1990s. These are the works the conventional settings come from — cited as attribution, not as links.

1. J. Welles Wilder Jr., New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems (1978)

   RSI, Average True Range, ADX and the Directional Movement system, Parabolic SAR — and the 14-period convention that runs through all of them.

2. John Bollinger, Bollinger on Bollinger Bands (2001)

   Bollinger Bands, %b and bandwidth; the 20-period, two-deviation default.

3. Gerald Appel, Technical Analysis: Power Tools for Active Investors (2005)

   MACD and the 12 / 26 / 9 settings.

4. Thomas Bulkowski, Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns (2005)

   The chart-pattern statistics that circulate as “success rates”.

5. Norman Fosback, Stock Market Logic (1976)

   Negative and Positive Volume Index, and the 255-day signal line.

6. Tushar Chande & Stanley Kroll, The New Technical Trader (1994)

   Aroon, the Chande Momentum Oscillator, StochRSI and the Dynamic Momentum Index.

7. Alexander Elder, Trading for a Living (1993)

   Force Index, and the three-screen approach behind its 2- and 13-period pairing.

8. Bill Williams, Trading Chaos (1995)

   The Alligator, Awesome Oscillator, Acceleration/Deceleration and Market Facilitation Index.

9. Larry Williams

   Williams %R (1973) and the Ultimate Oscillator (1976).

10. Goichi Hosoda (“Ichimoku Sanjin”)

    The Ichimoku Kinko Hyo system and its 9 / 26 / 52 periods, published 1968.

11. Donald Dorsey

    Mass Index, the Relative Volatility Index and Inertia.

12. Michael J. Huddleston (“ICT”, Inner Circle Trader)

    Popularised the Smart Money Concepts framework: fair value gaps, order blocks, market structure shifts, optimal trade entry, killzones and the power of three.

13. Marc Chaikin

    Accumulation/Distribution line, Chaikin Money Flow, Chaikin Oscillator and Chaikin Volatility.

14. Others cited in place

    George Lane (stochastics), Donald Lambert (CCI), Joe Granville (OBV), Richard Donchian (channels), Chester Keltner and Linda Bradford Raschke (Keltner channels), Manning Stoller (STARC bands), Price Headley (Acceleration Bands), Alan Hull (Hull moving average), William Blau (True Strength Index), Doug Schaff (Schaff Trend Cycle), Jack Hutson (TRIX), Olivier Seban (Supertrend).

Eleven free-licence photographs, chosen from Unsplash and supplied by the site's owner. Every one of them is mapped to a single two-colour duotone so that pictures by eleven different photographers read as one commissioned set — that treatment is a presentation choice made here, not anything the photographers did. All eleven are free to use under the Unsplash Licence, which does not require attribution — the credits are here anyway, because a reference work that names its studies and not its photographers would be an odd kind of reference work.

1. Home — Jason Leungunsplash.com

   Mountains covered with fog. @ninjason

2. Base rates — Himal Ranaunsplash.com

   Snow-covered mountain under a blue sky. @himal_r

3. The math — Bob Brewerunsplash.com

   Eroded rock formations. @brewbottle

4. Check yourself — Javier Virues-Ortegaunsplash.com

   A ripple in a body of water. @javier_virues_ortega

5. Reading a candle — Zetong Liunsplash.com

   Rocky mountain beside water. @zetong

6. Candle patterns — Haris khanunsplash.com

   A large group of sand dunes under a blue sky. @hariskhan488

7. Chart shapes — Daniil Silantevunsplash.com

   Hazy, distant mountains in a layered landscape. @betagamma

8. Key statistics — Artur Solarzunsplash.com

   Light grey concrete wall. @cptlajmenko

9. Smart Money Concepts — Odileunsplash.com

   Water ripples under the sun. @odile__

10. Reference appendix — Megunsplash.com

    A plain light-grey ground, used as the band behind all six appendix pages. @megindoors

11. Sources — Declan Sununsplash.com

    Antique wooden letterpress type blocks. @declansun

How this page itself is put together, and who put it there.

1. Research, writing, figures and code — Claude (Anthropic)

   Every definition was written for this page, every diagram drawn as inline SVG rather than placed as an image, and the whole site built as a single HTML file — the candle glyphs, the chart-shape figures, the Smart Money Concepts charts, the base-rate figures and the interactive break-even curve all generated in code from their underlying data. The evidence tags were assigned entry by entry by searching for a published test of each claim; where none was found, the entry says so.

2. Direction, scope and design decisions — the site's owner

   The subject, the structure, the visual direction and every editorial call about what belonged here and what did not — including the decision to open the site with the measured outcomes of retail trading and to tag every entry with the evidence behind it, at the cost of making the rest of the site look smaller.

3. Interfonts.google.com

   Headings, body and interface text, after the system face where one is available.

4. IBM Plex Monofonts.google.com

   Settings, labels and every number.

5. Palette

   One accent on two neutral grounds — #0B6BD4 on a near-white canvas for the opening pages and a cooler grey for the reference appendix, with the neutrals biased very slightly toward the accent rather than left pure. An earlier five-colour scheme (navy, evergreen, gold, cream and charcoal) was retired: five colours each competing to be the accent meant none of them led, and gold on cream fell below readable contrast at small sizes.