Settings

Settings

Every input the indicator exposes is documented here, grouped by function. For each setting, you will find the default, what it changes in practice, the tradeoff, and where it can hurt you if pushed too far.

The settings are organized in the order you are most likely to need them, not the order they appear in the panel.

Slot settings

The indicator has three independent stochastic slots: Stoch 01, Stoch 02, and Stoch 03. Each slot has an identical set of controls. The defaults differ only in timeframe (5-minute, 15-minute, 60-minute) and line color. Everything described below applies to all three slots unless noted otherwise.

Enable Stoch 01 / 02 / 03

Default: on (all three enabled)

Toggles the entire slot. When a slot is disabled, it does not calculate, does not plot, does not contribute to the blend, and does not fire alerts. Disabling is clean — it removes the slot from everything.

Hide Stoch 01 / 02 / 03 Plot

Default: off

Hides the slot's K line from the chart, but the slot still calculates, still feeds into the blend, and still fires alerts. This is useful when you want a slot's data in the composite without the visual clutter of its individual line.

Watch out: a hidden slot that is pulling the blend in a direction you do not expect will be invisible on the chart. If the Blended K line is behaving in a way that does not match what the visible slot lines suggest, check whether a hidden slot is the reason. This is one of the quietest ways to confuse yourself — the blend moves, the visible lines do not explain why, and the answer is a slot you hid three weeks ago and forgot about.

Source

Default: close

The price input for the raw stochastic calculation. Standard options: open, high, low, close, hl2, hlc3, ohlc4, hlcc4. Close is the textbook source for ta.stoch(). Changing it is rarely necessary, but hl2 or hlc3 can slightly alter how the stochastic responds to volatility by incorporating more of the bar's price range into the source.

If you are using Optional Ticker (see below), the source is evaluated on the overridden symbol, not the chart symbol.

TimeFrame

Defaults: 5-minute (Stoch 01), 15-minute (Stoch 02), 60-minute (Stoch 03)

The timeframe on which the slot runs its stochastic calculation. This is the core of the multi-timeframe architecture — each slot looks at a different window of price data.

Hard constraint: the slot timeframe must be equal to or higher than the chart timeframe. If it is lower, the script stops with a runtime error. There is no workaround. You must either lower the chart timeframe or raise the slot's.

What to think about when changing this:

• The defaults give a short/medium/long spread for intraday trading on 1-to-5-minute charts. If you trade on a 15-minute chart, you would need to raise Stoch 01's timeframe to at least 15 minutes.

• Setting a slot to a very high timeframe relative to the chart (e.g., Daily on a 1-minute chart) creates a slot that updates extremely slowly. With On Bar Close on, the line will hold flat for an entire trading day before jumping. This is not broken — it is the reality of what a daily stochastic looks like on an intraday chart.

• Setting all three slots to the same timeframe defeats the purpose. You get three copies of the same calculation and a blend that adds nothing over a single stochastic. Use at least two distinct timeframes to get any multi-timeframe value.

• Leaving the timeframe empty inherits the chart timeframe. Two slots at chart timeframe and one at a higher timeframe gives a 2:1 weight bias to chart-level momentum in the blend, which may or may not be what you want.

K Length

Default: 14

The lookback period for the raw ta.stoch() calculation — how many bars the stochastic uses to determine the high-low range that price is measured against. This is the classic stochastic parameter. Shorter lengths (5, 7) react faster to recent price swings. Longer lengths (21, 28) are smoother and slower.

Tradeoff: a shorter K Length makes the raw stochastic more volatile. If you then apply heavy K Smoothing to tame it, you are partially undoing the shorter length. The two settings interact — shortening K Length to 5 while raising K Smoothing to 9 can produce a line that reacts about as slowly as the default 14/3 combination, but with different smoothing characteristics. If you change one, check whether the other still makes sense.

At extremes: very short values (1-3) produce erratic, jumpy output — the stochastic reacts to every bar's range independently and whips between extremes. Very long values (50+) make the stochastic sluggish, reporting momentum that may have changed many bars ago. The default 14 is a well-tested middle ground for most markets and timeframes.

K Smoothing

Default: 3

The length of the moving average that smooths the raw stochastic %K into the slot's displayed K line. This is the first smoothing pass in the slot's processing chain.

A value of 1 with SMA effectively passes the raw %K through unchanged. Higher values calm the line and reduce whipsaws, but add lag — the line responds more slowly to new price data.

This is where smoothing starts to accumulate. K Smoothing is the first layer. D Length is the second. Master Smoothing (if enabled) is the third, applied at the blend level. Each layer adds its own delay. If you set K Smoothing to 9, D Length to 9, and Master Smoothing to EMA(9), the resulting Blended K is reporting conditions from many bars ago. The display looks calm and stable, but that calm is manufactured delay. See For the Geeks for a concrete breakdown of how the layers stack.

K Type

Default: SMA

Selects the moving average used for K Smoothing. Options are available from the Axiom MA Library, including SMA, EMA, and several others.

What this does not change: K Type does not alter the raw stochastic calculation. It only selects the post-stochastic smoothing MA. The raw ta.stoch() is always the same standard algorithm regardless of this setting. "K Type: EMA" means "smooth the raw %K with an EMA," not "calculate a different kind of stochastic."

Each MA type has different lag and responsiveness characteristics:

If you do not have a strong reason to change this, SMA or EMA are solid defaults.

D Length

Default: 3

The length of the moving average that smooths K into D. This is the second smoothing pass. The D line determines regime — when K is above D, the slot is bullish; when below, bearish.

Longer D Length creates a slower D that does not track K as closely, which means the regime holds longer and flips less often. Shorter D Length makes D hug K tightly, producing more frequent regime changes and more whipsaw in choppy conditions.

This interacts directly with K Smoothing. Both smooth the same data in sequence. If K Smoothing already made the line calm, a long D Length on top of that pushes the regime detection further behind current conditions. A regime flip that happens after two heavy smoothing passes is always late — and "late" in momentum reading means you are the last person to see a shift that the underlying price action already made obvious.

D Type

Default: SMA

Same options and same considerations as K Type. Selects the MA used for the D smoothing pass.

Blended Weight

Default: 33.3

Controls how much influence this slot has in the blended oscillator. Weights are relative, not absolute — they do not need to sum to 100 or any specific number. The indicator normalizes automatically. Weights of 10, 20, and 30 produce the same ratios as 33.3, 66.6, and 100.

Weight 0 is a special case. A slot with weight 0 still calculates, still plots, and still fires alerts — it just does not contribute to the blend. This is different from disabling the slot entirely. Weight 0 is useful when you want to see a slot's data and get its alerts without letting it influence the composite.

Extreme asymmetry has a cost. If you set one slot to 100 and the others to 0.5, the blend is dominated by a single slot. The Blended K line will nearly mirror that slot's K, which means you are not getting meaningful multi-timeframe synthesis — just a dressed-up single-slot view. The blend will look like a composite but behave like a copy. The danger is that it still feels like a multi-timeframe reading, which gives unearned confidence. Check the weight distribution if the blend seems to track one slot almost exactly.

Line Width

Default: 2

Visual thickness of the slot's plotted K line. Cosmetic only — it changes nothing about the calculation or behavior.

Optional Ticker

Default: empty (inherits the chart symbol)

Overrides the symbol for this slot. When set, the stochastic calculation runs on the specified symbol's data instead of the chart symbol. The output is still on the -100 to +100 bipolar scale, so it blends with other slots regardless of the symbols' price differences.

This is a power-user feature. Blending stochastic values from different symbols produces a composite number that is mathematically valid but not automatically meaningful. The blend does not measure correlation between the symbols, does not account for regime differences, and does not imply that the symbols are moving for the same reason. See Multi-Ticker Mixing for a full treatment of when this is useful and where it misleads.

A quiet risk: the indicator does not display the ticker override on the chart. After setting Optional Ticker to SPY on Stoch 03 and forgetting about it, you may spend weeks reading that slot as if it were measuring your chart symbol's stochastic. It is not. The reading is measuring SPY's momentum. Keep a note of which slots are overridden if you use this feature.

General oscillator settings

Overbought Level

Default: 70

Sets the upper dashed reference line and the threshold for the "Blended Stoch Overbought" alert.

This value is on the bipolar scale. +70 here corresponds to roughly stochastic 85 in traditional terms. That is substantially more extreme than the conventional stochastic 80 overbought line. If you set this expecting the same frequency of overbought events you are used to from standard stochastic indicators, you will see far fewer. To approximate the traditional stochastic 80 level on this oscillator, you would set the overbought level to +60.

Oversold Level

Default: -70

The lower threshold. Same scale logic as above. -70 on the bipolar scale corresponds to roughly stochastic 15 — more extreme than the traditional 20 oversold level.

Display settings

Plot Blended K/D

Default: on

Toggles the Blended K line, Blended D line, and the fill between them. When off, only the individual slot K plots are visible.

Turning this off is useful when you want to focus entirely on individual slot behavior without the composite overlay. The blended lines can visually dominate the pane, especially with the default line width of 3.

Blended Line Width

Default: 3

Visual thickness of the Blended K and D lines. Cosmetic only.

Master smoothing settings

Enable Master Smoothing

Default: off

When enabled, adds a final MA pass to the Blended K and D lines after blending. This is a third smoothing layer on top of the per-slot K Smoothing and D smoothing. The smoothing applies to the composite, not to individual slots.

Use this with eyes open. The blend already incorporates two smoothing stages per slot. Adding a third produces a very calm, very stable line — and a line that is significantly delayed. Master Smoothing is the easiest way to create an indicator that confirms trends well after they have started and catches reversals well after they have begun. It is useful when the blend is noisy from diverging slots, but the cost is always more lag.

Master MA Type

Default: EMA

Selects the moving average for the master smoothing pass. Same options as K Type and D Type.

Master Length

Default: 3

The lookback period for the master smoothing MA. Higher values produce more smoothing and more lag.

Power user settings

On Bar Close?

Default: on

This is the most consequential setting in the indicator. It controls whether higher-timeframe slot data comes from the last confirmed bar or the current building bar. It applies globally — all slots use the same mode.

• On (default): each slot uses the previous fully confirmed higher-timeframe bar's values. The display is stable and will not change until the next HTF bar closes. What you see live matches what the chart will show in history. This is the non-repainting mode.

• Off: each slot uses the current building higher-timeframe bar's values. The slot updates on every chart-timeframe tick. The display is more responsive but the reading is provisional — it can change with every new tick and may look different once the HTF bar closes and the history is finalized.

If you are not sure which to use, leave it on. If you are considering turning it off, read MTF and Repainting first. The risk is specific: with this off, the display updates on every tick, the reading looks current and definitive, and you make a decision based on what you see. Then the higher-timeframe bar closes, the final value differs from the interim one, and the chart rewrites the history. The decision you made and the chart you are now looking at no longer agree. That disconnect is invisible unless you know to expect it, and it compounds over time into a kind of confidence erosion that is hard to trace back to a settings toggle.

ALMA Offset

Default: 0.85

Controls the offset parameter for the ALMA algorithm. Only relevant when at least one MA type selection (K Type, D Type, or Master MA Type) is set to ALMA.

Critical: this setting is global. The same offset applies to every ALMA instance across all three slots and the master smoother. If you change it to tune one slot's ALMA behavior, every other slot using ALMA changes too. There is no per-slot ALMA configuration. The most common way this bites: you set ALMA as the K Type for Stoch 02, tweak the offset to get the curve shape you want, and do not realize that Stoch 01's D smoothing — which you also set to ALMA last week — just changed underneath you. If you use ALMA on more than one slot or smoothing stage, every tuning change is a global change.

ALMA Sigma

Default: 6.0

Controls the sigma (width) parameter for ALMA. Same global scope as ALMA Offset.

ALMA Floor Offset?

Default: off

When enabled, floors the ALMA offset to an integer value. Same global scope as the other ALMA settings.

The smoothing stack at a glance

Understanding how the smoothing layers interact is one of the most important things in this manual. Here is the full chain:

Raw %K (ta.stoch)  └── K Smoothing (first MA pass) ──► displayed K line per slot        └── D Smoothing (second MA pass) ──► internal D line per slot              └── Blending (weighted average across slots) ──► Blended K & D                    └── Master Smoothing (third MA pass, if enabled) ──► final Blended lines

Each layer adds lag. The lag compounds. A setting of 3 at each layer does not mean "3 bars of lag" — it means three separate smoothing operations, each delaying the output further.

Rule of thumb: if the Blended K line looks very smooth and very stable, ask yourself how much of that stability is real momentum and how much is manufactured delay. Toggle Master Smoothing off. Reduce D Length to 1. See what the less-smoothed picture looks like. If the less-smoothed version is telling a meaningfully different story — choppier, or already turning while the smoothed version held steady — the smoothing was not cleaning the data. It was hiding a change you needed to see. You can always add smoothing back. You cannot unsee what the raw reading tells you. And you cannot un-make a decision that relied on smoothness that was just delay wearing a good suit.