Quick Start

This page is for the reader who just added Axiom Stoch Osc STR to a chart and wants a sober first-session read before touching any settings. If you already use Stoch Osc Base, the first half will be familiar; skip to "What is different from Base" if you want the delta.

You will not find "best settings" here. You will find the shortest correct first use, the handful of visual facts that keep you from misreading the pane, and a short list of what to verify before you trust anything on this indicator for live decisions.

Step one: drop it on a chart

Add the indicator to an intraday chart where the default slot timeframes are legal. A 1m or 5m chart works for the first-session walk-through without changing inputs. A 15m chart can work too, but only after you raise slot 01 from 5m to 15m or leave it empty to inherit the chart timeframe. The pane opens below price with a fixed 0..100 vertical axis. You will see horizontal guides at 0, 20, 50, 80, and 100, a small cluster of markers and columns, and one coloured region pulsing between a K line and a D line. That coloured region is the blend fill. It is the fastest visual cue the indicator gives you.

At defaults, three slots are running in the blend math: slot 01 at the 5-minute timeframe, slot 02 at 15-minute, slot 03 at 60-minute. Each uses the classical stochastic settings a reader familiar with ta.stoch will recognise — K length 14, K smoothing 3 SMA, D length 3 SMA — and each contributes equally to the weighted mean at 33.3 weight. Slots 04 and 05 are disabled by default. The slot K lines are hidden by default too; the blend is the only line drawn at defaults besides the structure overlays.

If the indicator throws a runtime error the moment it loads, read the error carefully: it will name the slot whose timeframe is below the chart timeframe. For example, if you are on a 15-minute chart, the 5-minute slot will error because slot 01 cannot run at a timeframe lower than the chart. Move the chart down to 5m or lower, raise slot 01 to 15m or higher, leave slot 01 empty so it inherits the chart timeframe, or disable the slot. The troubleshooting page carries the full rule.

Step two: read the pane in a specific order

This is the part the Settings page cannot teach. The pane has a lot on it; reading it well means reading it in sequence.

1. Blend K versus blend D. The fill between the two lines is the first thing to look at. When K is above D the fill is lime. When D is above K the fill is red. Cross events produce the colour flip. This is not a trade signal — it is a regime read. "The blended read is currently leaning bullish" or "the blended read is currently leaning bearish." That is all the K/D colour gives you.

2. Blend K versus the 80 and 20 guides. Classical stochastic convention places overbought at 80 and oversold at 20. Those are the defaults. When the blend K is stretched above 80 or below 20, the reading is pinned to one side of the range. Pinned is not the same as exhausted; pinned readings can stay pinned for a long time in a real move. The guide positions matter, but they are reference zones, not reversal lines.

3. Blend K versus the Donchian steplines. The silver steplines wrapping the blend track the highest and lowest values the blended K has reached over the channel length. When the blend presses the upper stepline it is making new local highs in the oscillator; when it presses the lower stepline it is making new local lows. This is a statement about the blend's own range, not about price's range.

4. BBWP columns at the bottom. A short blue column means the blend's band width is compressed against its recent history. A tall aqua column means the blend's band width is expanded above the default threshold. Low BBWP is a statement about the oscillator having been quiet; it is not a statement about price having been quiet. These two are sometimes correlated and sometimes not, and the difference matters. More on this on the visuals-and-logic page.

5. Divergence triangles, if any are visible. A lime up-triangle near the floor of the pane says: at the pivot that just confirmed, chart price made a lower low while the blended K made a higher low at the corresponding offset. A red down-triangle near the ceiling says the inverse. Triangles describe a prior pivot. They do not call the next move. They are a question worth asking, not an answer the pane is handing you.

You can run through all five reads in about thirty seconds once the sequence is familiar. None of them is a trade instruction. They are an orientation pass — the moment before you look at price action, volume, and context with the oscillator read already loaded in your head. The point is to avoid the trap of staring at the pane and letting whichever visual is loudest drive your reaction. The blend fill is almost always the loudest visual; it is also the most general statement the pane makes. The sequence above keeps the loud visual in its proper place.

Step three: one safe first change — chart timeframe

Before you change any input on the indicator itself, verify the slots behave correctly under your chart's timeframe. If your normal working chart is 15m, the default 5-minute slot will throw the runtime error on load. Two safe responses:

• Raise the lowest slot's timeframe to match your chart. If you trade on 15m, set slot 01's TimeFrame input to 15 so its bar cadence matches the chart. Slots 02 and 03 stay at 15 or higher.

• Or leave the slot timeframes alone and stay on a 5m or lower chart for a session while you learn the pane.

Pick the one that costs you less. The slot timeframes are defaults, not prescriptions. The rule the code enforces is only "slot TF must be at or above chart TF" — everything else is your call.

Step four: one read, done honestly, on the default config

Here is a read sequence to practise on a live chart. It is not a trade setup. It is a rehearsal of how to use the pane without lying to yourself.

1. Look at the blend fill colour. Say the regime aloud: "Blend is leaning bullish" or "Blend is leaning bearish."

2. Find where the blend K sits in the 0..100 range. Is it near 50? Near one of the guides? Pinned past a guide? Say that aloud too.

3. Look at BBWP. Is it short or tall? Rising or falling over the last few bars? This tells you about the blend's own volatility regime, not price's.

4. Check the Donchian steplines. Is the blend K near the top stepline, near the bottom, or in the middle of its channel?

5. If a divergence triangle is present in the last few bars, note which direction and note how many bars back the pivot actually sits. The triangle is at the confirmation bar by default; the pivot itself is Pivot Len bars to the left.

That is the orientation read. Nothing on this list is a trade. The goal is to build a habit of naming what the blend is doing before you decide what to do about it.

What is different from Base, if you are coming from there

Three concrete differences matter on a first session:

• Five slots, not three. Slots 04 and 05 are off by default. Turn them on when you know what you want them to add — a cross-ticker slot, a higher timeframe slot, or a slot with a different source — and know their weights so the blend does not silently rebalance.

• Per-slot On Bar Close?. Base had one global switch. STR gives each slot its own. All five default to true, which matches Base's safe default. You gain the ability to set an HTF slot to false if you want a live read from that slot, but keep that mixed-posture choice deliberate. The mtf-and-repainting page has the full picture.

• Four blend-derived structure features. Base shows K and D. STR adds Donchian, BBWP, divergence, and optional Keltner, all computed on the blend itself. Divergence, BBWP, and Donchian default on; Keltner defaults off. Read the visuals-and-logic page before you form strong opinions about what the features are telling you.

Things to verify on your own chart before trusting anything

The pack writes a manual. Your chart is the verification. Every item below is designed so you can watch a specific behaviour happen, confirm the page's claim about it, and move on with a small amount of first-hand evidence instead of a large amount of borrowed trust. Run them on a 1m chart at defaults.

• Slot plots are hidden at defaults. Open Settings. Confirm Hide Plot is checked for slots 01, 02, and 03. Uncheck one and watch that slot's coloured K line appear on the pane. Re-check it when you are done. This is the only place the pane is not telling you the full contribution story: three slots are running but only the blend is drawn.

• Hidden slots still contribute to the blend. With slot 03 hidden again, change its weight from 33.3 to 0. Watch the blend drift as it rebalances onto slots 01 and 02. The plot being hidden never had anything to do with whether the slot was in the blend math. Return the weight to 33.3 afterwards.

• Weight zero does not silence the plot. Set slot 01's weight to 0 and uncheck its Hide Plot. The slot's K line still draws across the pane. Weight zero silences the blend contribution only; visibility, compute, and per-slot alerts are untouched.

• Disabling a slot removes it from the blend. Toggle Enable Stoch 01 off. The blend shifts decisively — slot 01 is no longer running at all. Re-enable when you are done. Enable is the only real kill switch; weight zero and Hide Plot are partial controls that share a visual with "off" without being "off."

• Divergence does not fire early. Toggle Plot On Pivot on. Wait for a new confirmed divergence. Watch the triangle back-shift onto the pivot bar. Now scroll to the live right edge: the back-shifted marker never appears before the right-side lookback fills. The alert still fires at the confirmation bar, which is Pivot Len bars to the right of the drawn triangle. The drawing position is a readability choice; the alert time is the only moment you could have actually known.

• On Bar Close? true holds confirmed history steady. Hover any historical bar on slot 03's plot (unhide temporarily) and note the K value. Flip On Bar Close? from true to false. Hover the same historical bar — the value may change, because the live-read branch uses a different HTF lookup for past bars. Flip back to true and the original value returns. This is the clearest visible proof of the repaint boundary, and it is the verification behind one of the most load-bearing claims in the pack.

• Changing Source barely moves the slot K on narrow-range bars. Set slot 01's Source to hlc3. Compare the K line visually against its previous close-sourced shape. On narrow bars the K line is almost identical. On wide-range bars you will see a small displacement. If you expected the range to rescale, this is the moment the Settings page's note about ta.stoch(src, high, low, n) becomes concrete.

These checks take under fifteen minutes together. They are the fastest way to earn a calibrated sense of what the indicator is and is not doing, and every other page in the pack assumes you have done at least the first three.

What a safe first use does not do

• It does not act on a divergence triangle as if it were an entry.

• It does not treat a five-slot alignment as five independent votes. At defaults there are only three active slots anyway; reading more breadth than that is a self-inflicted wound.

• It does not read BBWP as price volatility.

• It does not move the 80/20 guides to 70/30 and expect the defaults' hit behaviour to carry across.

• It does not enable slot 05 and wire the alignment alerts — those alerts cannot fire with slot 05 enabled, and the alerts page explains why.

• It does not touch the Power User blocks on any MA family. Those blocks become useful after you know why you want them; until then they trade clarity for confusion.

Where to go next: Visuals and logic for the stochastic-habit corrections and the reading order in depth, Settings for every input by tier, MTF and repainting before you change any On Bar Close? setting, Alerts before you wire anything.