Visuals and Logic

Written By Axiom Admin

Last updated About 1 month ago

Visuals and Logic

This page teaches you how to read the oscillator pane — what each visual element means, how regime states work, how to convert between the bipolar scale and standard RSI, and how to interpret the pane under different market conditions. If the settings page explains what each knob does, this page explains what the picture on screen is telling you.

The elements in the pane

Reference lines

Five horizontal lines anchor the pane:

Line	Value	Style	What it marks
Upper boundary	+100	Solid red	The hard ceiling. RSI cannot go higher than this. Values compress near ±100 as the underlying RSI approaches its own extremes.
Overbought	+70 (default)	Dashed gray	The level where the OB alert fires. On the bipolar scale, this is a deeply extended reading — equivalent to standard RSI 85.
Mid line	0	Solid gray	Neutral. Equivalent to standard RSI 50. Above zero means RSI is above its midpoint. Below zero means below.
Oversold	−70 (default)	Dashed gray	The OS alert threshold. Equivalent to standard RSI 15.
Lower boundary	−100	Solid green	The hard floor.

Individual slot lines

Each enabled slot that is not hidden draws a single line in its assigned color. The line shows that slot's smoothed RSI value (K) on the bipolar scale.

Default slot colors: Slot 1 = teal, Slot 2 = aqua, Slot 3 = blue, Slot 4 = orange, Slot 5 = yellow, Slot 6 = fuchsia, Slot 7 = purple, Slot 8 = gray, Slot 9 = silver, Slot 10 = white.

The line color encodes regime state. Each line has two brightness levels:

Bright (full color) = bullish regime. The slot's RSI (K) is above its Signal (D).
Dim (reduced opacity) = bearish regime. K is below D.

This is the only place where the K/D relationship is visible per slot. The Signal line (D) is not drawn separately for individual slots — you infer the regime from the color change. A shift from bright to dim is a bearish crossover. A shift from dim to bright is a bullish crossover. These are momentum direction changes in that slot's context, not trade signals.

Blended RSI and Signal

When "Plot Blended RSI/Signal" is enabled (the default), two additional lines appear:

Blended RSI line — the weighted average of all enabled slots' K values. Colored green when the blended RSI is above the blended Signal (bullish composite regime), red when below (bearish).
Blended Signal line — the weighted average of all enabled slots' D values. Drawn in gray.
Fill between the two lines — green (with transparency) during bullish composite regime, red during bearish.

The blended pair is the only place in the pane where you can see both RSI and Signal as separate drawn lines. The fill makes the composite regime visually obvious at a glance.

The regime model

This oscillator does not define bullish and bearish by fixed thresholds. A reading above zero is not automatically bullish. A reading below zero is not automatically bearish.

Instead, regime is defined by the relationship between RSI (K) and Signal (D):

Bullish regime: K > D. The smoothed RSI is above its own moving average. Momentum is increasing relative to its recent average.
Bearish regime: K < D. The smoothed RSI is below its own moving average. Momentum is decreasing relative to its recent average.

This is structurally the same as how MACD uses a fast line vs. a signal line to determine momentum direction. If you have used MACD crossovers before, the logic here is familiar — it is just applied to RSI instead of price-based EMAs.

Why this matters: A slot can be in bullish regime while its RSI is below zero. That means momentum is below the midpoint but recovering — K has crossed above D from below. Conversely, a slot can be in bearish regime while its RSI is above zero — momentum is above the midpoint but fading. Regime tells you about the direction of momentum change, not the absolute level.

If you have spent years reading standard RSI by watching whether the line is above 50 or below 30, this will feel wrong at first. A bright (bullish) slot line at −15 is not a contradiction — it is the oscillator telling you that momentum is negative but improving. A dim (bearish) line at +40 is not broken — momentum is comfortably above midpoint but losing speed. Train yourself to read color as direction and position as level. They are independent pieces of information, and the combination is what gives each slot its full meaning.

The bipolar scale conversion

The oscillator rescales standard RSI from 0–100 to −100 to +100. The formula is straightforward:

Bipolar value = (Standard RSI − 50) × 2

And going the other direction:

Standard RSI = (Bipolar value / 2) + 50

Conversion reference

Bipolar	Standard RSI	What it means
+100	100	Maximum — RSI is at its absolute ceiling
+80	90	Extreme overbought
+70	85	Default OB threshold — genuinely extended
+60	80	Strong bullish momentum
+50	75	Standard RSI "overbought" (70) is actually here at bipolar +40
+40	70	Where standard RSI 70 maps — the familiar OB zone starts here
+20	60	Moderately above midpoint
0	50	Neutral
−20	40	Moderately below midpoint
−40	30	Where standard RSI 30 maps — familiar OS zone starts here
−50	25	Moderately oversold
−70	15	Default OS threshold
−80	10	Extreme oversold
−100	0	Minimum — RSI at absolute floor

The practical consequence: if you have spent years reading standard RSI with OB at 70 and OS at 30, those intuitions map to bipolar ±40, not ±70. The default thresholds of ±70 are much more extreme than what most traders are used to. This is intentional — it prevents the oscillator from generating excessive OB/OS signals — but you need to know it, or you will spend sessions wondering why the oscillator "never reaches overbought."

If you want your OB/OS alerts at the familiar RSI 70/30 levels, set the oscillator's OB to +40 and OS to −40. If you want them at RSI 80/20, use ±60. Choose the threshold that matches your actual decision framework, not the default.

Reading the pane — three scenarios

Scenario 1: Strong multi-timeframe alignment

All three default slots (5m, 15m, 60m) show bright lines above zero. The blended line is green, comfortably positive, and the blended Signal is also positive but below the blended RSI. The fill is green.

What this tells you: RSI momentum is above its midpoint on all three timeframes, and all three are in bullish regime (K > D). The evidence is aligned — the momentum picture looks the same regardless of which timeframe you check.

What this does not tell you: That momentum will continue. All three timeframes can be aligned and bullish while the underlying price is approaching a resistance level, a news event, or an exhaustion point. Alignment means the RSI evidence agrees. It does not mean the market agrees with the trade you are considering.

What to notice: How far above zero are the individual slot lines? If slot 3 (60m) is at +30 and slot 1 (5m) is at +65, the higher timeframe is moderately bullish while the lower timeframe is strongly bullish. That gap can mean the lower timeframe is running ahead, or it can mean the higher timeframe has room to catch up. The blend (with equal weights) would sit around +43, which looks like a healthy bullish reading — but the spread between slots is important context that the blend alone does not show.

Scenario 2: Lower timeframes flipping while the higher timeframe holds

Slot 3 (60m) is bright and above zero — still bullish. Slot 2 (15m) just shifted from bright to dim — the 15-minute RSI has crossed below its Signal. Slot 1 (5m) has been dim for a few bars and is drifting below zero.

What this tells you: The lower-timeframe momentum is weakening or reversing while the higher-timeframe momentum still holds. This is a disagreement state. The 60-minute regime has not flipped, but the faster timeframes are showing early signs of a momentum shift.

What to look for in the blend: If the three slots have equal weight, the blend may still show green — two of the three components (the 60m at a positive value and possibly the 15m still marginally positive) can outweigh a single bearish lower-TF slot. This is exactly the situation where watching the blend alone would give you a calmer picture than the evidence warrants. Check the individual slot colors.

What to do next: This is not an instruction to act. It is an instruction to pay attention. The disagreement might resolve upward (lower timeframes recover, the higher timeframe was right all along) or it might resolve downward (higher timeframe follows the lower ones into bearish regime). You cannot tell which outcome is coming by staring at the oscillator. What you can do is recognize the state for what it is: the momentum picture across your timeframes is no longer uniform, and any decision you make in this window carries more uncertainty than it did when all three slots agreed.

Traders who have lived through this scenario a few times develop a feel for what they want to see before they act. Some wait for the higher-timeframe slot to confirm the lower-TF shift. Others wait for the lower-TF slots to recover and re-align with the higher TF. Either approach is a judgment call. The oscillator does not make it for you. But it gives you the information to make it consciously rather than discovering the disagreement after the fact.

Scenario 3: Ambiguous churn near zero

All three slot lines are hovering near zero, oscillating between slightly positive and slightly negative. The colors are changing every few bars — bright to dim and back. The blended line is flat, close to zero, with the fill alternating between green and red in thin slivers.

What this tells you: RSI momentum across your chosen timeframes is near its midpoint and directionless. K and D for each slot are close together, causing frequent regime crossovers. This is not a failure mode — it is the oscillator accurately reporting that momentum is not committed in either direction.

What to watch for: Frequent regime flipping near the zero line is the oscillator's version of "I do not have a strong reading." If you act on every regime flip in this state, you will whipsaw. If you are using regime-flip alerts, this is when they produce the most noise.

How to handle it: Recognize the ambiguous state for what it is. Some traders widen their Signal length to reduce the sensitivity of regime flips. Others simply wait for the oscillator to commit — when the slot lines start moving away from zero and holding a direction, the ambiguity is resolving. The oscillator cannot tell you when to wait. But it can show you when momentum is not giving you much to work with, and this is that picture.

What the pane cannot show you

The pane shows RSI momentum and regime state across the contexts you configured. It does not show price structure, volume, support and resistance levels, order flow, or market context beyond what RSI measures.

A beautifully aligned bullish stack can exist at the top of an extended move just as easily as at the start of one. Three bright lines above zero and a green blended fill can feel like confirmation — but confirmation of what? The oscillator confirms that RSI is above its signal on the timeframes you chose. It does not confirm that the underlying move has room to continue, or that price structure supports the direction, or that there is not a wall of supply ten ticks away. Those are questions RSI was never designed to answer.

Read the pane as evidence — momentum evidence from the timeframes and tickers you selected, smoothed the way you configured. Let your process decide what the evidence means. The oscillator is most useful when you treat it as one input among several, not when you let a clean-looking pane substitute for the rest of your analysis.