Quick Start

Quick Start

This page gets you from "just added it" to "I can see it working correctly" in the shortest honest path. It also warns you about the first things that might confuse you so you do not mistake normal behavior for a broken indicator.

Step 1: Add the indicator to a chart

Add Axiom DC Lite to any chart. For learning purposes, a 1-minute chart works best because it makes the higher-timeframe behavior most visible — you can watch the channels update in real time and see the step-change pattern clearly.

You do not need to change any settings to start. The defaults are designed to give you a useful multi-timeframe picture out of the box.

Step 2: Understand what you are looking at

With default settings, you will see four layers on the chart:

Each slot draws three lines: an upper line (highest high of the lookback), a lower line (lowest low), and a basis line (midpoint). The blended channel draws the same three lines plus a faint fill between the upper and lower bounds.

What "looks normal" on first load:

• The channels are layered roughly concentrically. The 5-minute slot sits closest to price, the 60-minute slot is widest, and the blended channel falls somewhere in between.

• The basis lines track the midpoints of their respective channels.

• During quiet markets, the channels may converge and look nearly identical. This is normal — the tool's value shows up most clearly when the timeframes diverge.

Step 3: Verify that confirmed-bar behavior is working

This is the most important check you can run on first use. It takes a few minutes, and at the end of it you will know — from your own observation, not from anyone's claim — that the indicator is showing you confirmed higher-timeframe values that match what was actually available at bar close.

1. Make sure you are on a 1-minute chart.

2. Leave On Bar Close at its default (ON). You will find it in the PU Settings section at the bottom of the indicator settings panel.

3. Watch the chart for a few minutes. Pay attention to the DC 01 slot (teal lines, 5-minute timeframe).

4. What you should see: The teal channel stays flat during the 5-minute bar. When the 5-minute bar closes, the channel steps to new values. Between closes, nothing moves.

5. What this confirms: The indicator is using the last completed 5-minute bar's Donchian values, not the still-forming bar. That flat period between updates is the indicator doing its job — it is waiting for confirmation before changing the picture.

Now scroll back a few bars and compare what you see in history to what you just watched form live. They should match. The values you see on completed bars are the same values that were visible at the time those bars closed. That is the confirmed-bar behavior you are verifying.

If you want to understand this mechanism more deeply — or verify it more rigorously — the MTF & Repainting page walks through the full verification procedure and explains the underlying logic.

Step 4: Notice the update cadence across slots

Each slot updates at the pace of its own timeframe. On a 1-minute chart:

• DC 01 (5m) updates every 5 bars

• DC 02 (15m) updates every 15 bars

• DC 03 (60m) updates every 60 bars

Between updates, each slot's channel is flat. This means the 60-minute slot will look "frozen" for long stretches while the 5-minute slot steps more frequently. Both behaviors are correct. The longer-timeframe slot is simply waiting for its next confirmed bar.

The blended channel updates whenever any contributing slot updates, so it may show small shifts more often than any individual slot.

First traps: things that look wrong but are not

These are the most common sources of confusion on first use. Knowing them in advance saves a round of troubleshooting.

"The channels are not updating"

If your chart timeframe is close to a slot's timeframe, updates appear infrequent. On a 5-minute chart, the DC 01 slot (5m) updates every single bar — but DC 03 (60m) updates only once every 12 bars. For the other 11 bars, DC 03 is flat. This is confirmed-bar behavior working correctly.

What to do: Switch to a 1-minute chart temporarily to see the step-change pattern more clearly. Once you trust it, go back to your normal chart timeframe.

"I turned off On Bar Close and history looks different"

When you toggle On Bar Close off, the channels start updating within the current higher-timeframe bar instead of waiting for it to close. This makes the right edge of the chart more responsive — but it also means the values you see during formation may change before the bar closes.

Look at the boundary between completed bars and the current bar. On completed bars, the indicator shows the final confirmed value. On the building bar, it shows the current in-progress value. That discontinuity is the repainting boundary, and it is the reason On Bar Close defaults to ON.

What to do: If you turned it off to experiment, turn it back on before you rely on any historical analysis. See MTF & Repainting for the full explanation.

"I set an Optional Ticker and the channel looks weird"

When a slot pulls data from a different instrument, it scales that instrument's Donchian Channel into your chart symbol's price space using a ratio based on the two instruments' closes. If the instruments trade at very different price levels or have very different volatility, the scaled channel can look unusually tight, wide, or offset compared to the native channels. If the script cannot compute a valid ratio, it leaves the alternate symbol's raw channel values in place, which can throw the slot far off your chart scale.

This is the scaling working as designed. It is translating the other instrument's structural range into your chart's coordinate system. The shape is meaningful for correlated instruments. For uncorrelated ones, it can be misleading.

What to do: Start by setting the Optional Ticker to something closely related to your chart symbol (a sector ETF, a correlated index). If the scaled channel moves roughly in sync with the chart's own channels, the scaling is doing useful work. If it moves in the opposite direction or behaves erratically, the instruments may not be correlated enough for the scaling to be meaningful. See Under the Hood for how the scaling works.

"The blended channel does not seem to match any of the individual slots"

It is not supposed to match exactly. The blended channel is a weighted average of the individual slots. It sits between them, closer to whichever slot has the highest weight. When the slots are aligned, the blend falls close to all of them and looks like a reasonable summary. When the slots diverge — say the teal channel has moved down while the purple channel is flat — the blend lands between the two, at a position that does not correspond to any real structural level on any single timeframe.

This is compression, not consensus. The blend is telling you the arithmetic middle of conflicting stories, which is not the same as telling you what is actually happening. On first use this can look like the blend is "wrong." It is not wrong — it is just limited in what it can represent.

What to do: Use the blended channel for a quick overall read, but check the individual slots whenever the blend is telling a story you plan to act on. If the slots agree, the blend is a fair summary. If they disagree, the individual slots are more useful. See Visuals & Logic for how to read convergence and divergence.

Where to go next

• To configure the tool for your process: Settings — every input, organized by function, with tradeoffs and warnings

• To learn how to read what you see: Visuals & Logic — meaningful states, divergence, what to notice and what to ignore

• To understand the repaint safety mechanism in depth: MTF & Repainting — the most important page in this manual