Visuals & Logic

This page is the single reference for what every visible element on the chart is and how it moves. Most misreads of this tool are misreads of one of three things: what the basis smoothing actually smooths, how hidden slots relate to the blend, and how the blended channel resolves disagreement across the slots underneath it. All three are unpacked here.

The visible elements, one at a time

A slot's upper and lower lines

For any enabled slot NN, the upper line is the highest high and the lower line is the lowest low over the last Length: bars, read at the slot's timeframe and on the slot's chosen symbol (the chart symbol if Optional Ticker: is empty, the alternate symbol rescaled into chart price space otherwise).

These two lines are raw Donchian. They are not smoothed by any knob on the slot — not Basis MA Length:, not Type:, not any power-user parameter. When a fresh swing high prints at the slot's timeframe, the upper line steps up. When a fresh swing low prints, the lower line steps down. Until a fresh extreme prints, the lines stay flat.

On the chart, the upper and lower lines appear in a 50%-opacity version of the slot's color so you can tell them apart from the fully opaque basis in the middle.

A slot's basis line

The basis is the midpoint of the slot's upper and lower lines — (upper + lower) / 2 — smoothed through the MA type in Type: at the length in Basis MA Length:. With the default Basis MA Length: 1, the smoothing layer is present but a length of one does not filter anything; the basis is effectively the raw midpoint. Increase the length above one and the basis begins to behave like a moving average of the midpoint.

The basis draws in the fully opaque slot color, so it is the line you can actually read cleanly when three stacks are overlapping.

The blended channel

The blended channel is a weight-normalized composite of the enabled slots with non-zero weights:

• blended_upper = Σ(weight · slot_upper) / Σ weight

• blended_lower = Σ(weight · slot_lower) / Σ weight

• blended_basis = Σ(weight · slot_basis) / Σ weight

The blended upper and lower draw as red lines with a translucent red fill between them. The blended basis draws as a lime line through the middle. The blended line width is separately configurable from the slot line widths so you can let the blend dominate, recede, or match the slots visually.

A slot with Blended Weight: 0 contributes a zero to the sum and nothing to the denominator. A slot that is disabled contributes nothing to either side. A slot that is enabled with Hide DC NN Plot ON still contributes in full — the hide flag is visual only.

The blended basis-trend state

The blended channel also carries a basis-trend state used by the blended basis-trend alerts. A slot votes up when its basis is at or above where it was Basis Trend Length: bars ago; it votes down when the basis is lower. The rule is worth stating plainly: the indicator sums the weights of enabled up-voting slots and down-voting slots, then compares the two sums. Whichever side has more weight wins; ties resolve to uptrend.

If you have three equally-weighted slots and two of them vote up, the blend reports uptrend. If you have three slots at 40 / 35 / 25 and only the 25-weight slot votes up, the blend reports downtrend (40 + 35 voting down, 25 voting up). If two slots at equal weight disagree — one up, one down — the blend resolves uptrend by convention. That tie-break is not a claim about the market. It is a deterministic rule so the blend's trend state is never undefined.

Slot colors (defaults)

The shipped palette from Slot 01 to Slot 10 runs teal, blue, purple, orange, yellow, fuchsia, lime, aqua, silver, maroon. The default is set once in the script and is not per-chart configurable through the standard inputs dialog. Every color can be reassigned if needed; if you have reassigned colors, treat the rest of this page's color references as the default palette it was written against.

State changes that actually matter

Not every pixel on the chart is a moment worth reading. The instrument is always in motion; the question is which of those motions is carrying information you did not already have.

• A slot's basis-trend state flips. The slot stops voting up and starts voting down, or vice versa. This is the state that feeds the per-slot DC NN Basis Is Uptrend / DC NN Basis Is Downtrend alerts. The flip is driven by Basis Trend Length:, not by Length: — so a "flip" is a comparison against the basis value Basis Trend Length: bars ago, nothing else.

• The chart close crosses a slot basis. Not every cross means anything — the basis is a midpoint, not a level — but a sustained run with the chart close above or below a slot basis is usually the beginning of a new relationship between price and that timeframe's range.

• A slot's upper or lower updates. A fresh swing extreme. On a slower slot, this is uncommon and meaningful; on a very fast slot, it is just housekeeping. If you find yourself watching a fresh 5m upper print every couple of minutes, you are reading noise, not a meaningful state change.

• The blended basis-trend state flips. This fires the Blended DC Basis Is Uptrend / Blended DC Basis Is Downtrend alerts. Remember the rule: majority weight wins, ties favor uptrend. A blended flip can happen without any individual slot flipping — if a slot's weight changes or a slot newly enters or leaves the contributing set, the majority can reshape while the slots underneath hold steady.

• An alignment condition goes from unsatisfied to satisfied. Every enabled slot suddenly agrees, either all up or all down, and the alignment alert fires. Alignment covers every enabled slot, including hidden ones.

Changes that happen every bar, every tick, or every HTF close — the plot sliding to the right, the live intrabar wiggle on a slot under On Bar Close? = OFF, the blended channel recomposing as slots update — are not state changes worth attending to. They are what motion looks like, not what new information looks like.

A useful attention heuristic: on each chart bar close, ask "did any slot's basis-trend state change, or did alignment change?" If the answer is no, no trend/alignment state changed. Fresh extremes or chart-close-vs-basis changes may still matter to your read, but the stack did not produce a new trend-state event. That habit will keep you from reading meaning into recomposition motion that is only the averaging working.

Agreement versus cancellation in the blend

A narrow blended channel can mean one of two very different things, and the distinction is not optional if you want to use this tool well.

• Narrow from agreement. All contributing slots have genuinely tight ranges at their respective timeframes. Volatility is compressed across the timeframes you asked about. The blend is narrow because everything feeding it is narrow.

• Narrow from cancellation. Some contributing slots have wide ranges and others have tight ranges; the weighted average comes out narrow because the wide slot carries less weight, or because a very tight slot with a large weight dominates. The blend is narrow, but the underlying picture is not compressed — it is disagreement being averaged down.

A concrete three-slot example will make the difference sit. Suppose:

• Slot 01 on 5m: upper = 101.00, basis = 100.00, lower = 99.00, weight = 40.

• Slot 02 on 15m: upper = 101.50, basis = 100.00, lower = 98.50, weight = 35.

• Slot 03 on 60m: upper = 105.00, basis = 100.00, lower = 95.00, weight = 25.

Blended upper = (40·101.00 + 35·101.50 + 25·105.00) / 100 = 102.025. Blended lower = (40·99.00 + 35·98.50 + 25·95.00) / 100 = 97.975. So the blend shows a channel roughly 102.0 to 98.0 — narrower than the 60-minute channel by itself.

A shallow read is "a 4-point channel, tight range." A careful read is "the 60-minute is actually running a 10-point channel, and the only reason the blend looks tight is that its weight is 25 against the fast slots' 75." If your trading decision depends on how tight the range actually is rather than how tight the weighted average says it is, you would want to look at the slot lines individually before concluding anything from the blend.

The practical habit this enforces: when the blended channel looks surprisingly narrow or surprisingly wide, open the slot lines underneath and ask why. If the blend and the slots tell the same story, you have agreement. If they tell different stories, the blend is telling you about a weighted average — which is useful, but it is not the same thing as what each timeframe is individually doing.

The smoothing asymmetry — in concrete terms

This is the single most commonly missed structural fact about this tool, so it gets its own section with a worked example.

Set Slot 01 to Length: 20, Basis MA Length: 1, Type: SMA. The basis is the raw midpoint of the 20-bar high and the 20-bar low. The upper and lower lines are the 20-bar Donchian extremes, directly.

Now change Basis MA Length: to 20 and leave everything else alone. The basis line softens — it now tracks a 20-bar SMA of the midpoint rather than the midpoint itself. You would expect, intuitively, that the outer channel also softens.

It does not. The upper is still the 20-bar highest high. The lower is still the 20-bar lowest low. When a fresh 20-bar high prints, the upper line still steps up on that bar, unsmoothed. The basis is now softer and flows; the upper and lower still step. The channel looks a little strange — a flowing midline running between two stepping bounds — because the channel is a little strange. Half of it is smoothed and half is not.

Why is it set up this way? Because the outer bounds are literal — "this is the highest high over the last 20 bars" is a fact about what the market did. Smoothing that would replace a fact with a shape. The basis, by contrast, is a derived midpoint whose purpose is to be read as a direction. Smoothing a direction estimate is reasonable; smoothing a recorded extreme is not.

Take the idea away from "Basis MA Length: smooths the channel." It does not. Your Length: knob is the only lever that changes the width and shape of the outer envelope. If the outer envelope looks wrong, it is Length: you are reaching for, not basis smoothing.

The hidden-plot trap, stated directly

A slot that is enabled with Hide DC NN Plot ON still:

• computes its upper, lower, and basis in full;

• contributes its weight to the blended channel;

• contributes its basis-trend state to the blended basis-trend vote;

• counts as an enabled slot in All DC Slot Bases Uptrend and All DC Slot Bases Downtrend alignment alerts.

The only thing hiding removes is the three plotted lines on the chart. Hiding is cosmetic. Disabling is mechanical.

This is not a bug and it is not a regrettable design choice. Hiding is useful precisely because it lets a slot participate without drawing — that is the whole point of the alerts-only silent-slot workflow in Workflows. But it is a trap for a reader who expects "hidden" to mean "out of the math," and the trap is worst when several slots are hidden at once. If your chart shows three visible slot stacks and the blended channel is not where those three stacks say it should be, check whether one or more of Slots 04 through 10 are enabled with their plot hidden and a non-zero weight.

To remove a slot from the blend and from alignment alerts, set its weight to zero (still enabled, still visible, no voice in the blend — note that zero-weight slots are still counted in alignment, but the alignment rule includes them only so they agree when agreeing; they contribute to the "every enabled slot agrees" check) or disable it entirely. Disabling is the cleanest option: an off slot is gone from every accounting.

How to verify what you think you are seeing

Three quick moves confirm your configuration matches your intent:

• Hover a line. TradingView's data window or tooltip will name which slot and which line you are pointing at. If the tooltip names a slot you did not expect, you have a hidden slot contributing.

• Toggle Hide DC NN Plot for one slot. Only that slot's three lines should disappear. The blended channel should not change. If the blended channel does change, something else in your configuration just shifted; back out and check.

• Set a slot to match a stock indicator. Put a stock Donchian indicator on the chart with the same length as one of your slots, then set the slot's timeframe to match the chart and the slot's Basis MA Length: to 1. The slot's upper, lower, and basis should match the stock Donchian exactly. If they do not, one of the two is reading different inputs than you think.

These three checks are worth running once, deliberately, the first time you configure this tool. They are also worth running any time the chart behaves in a way you cannot immediately explain.

What a clean read looks like

When this tool is behaving well for you:

• You can glance at the chart and name which color is which timeframe without thinking.

• You can name, in plain words, what you expect each slot to do on a fresh swing high or a fresh swing low.

• When the blended channel looks narrow, you know whether it is narrow from agreement or narrow from cancellation before you take the blend at face value.

• You never find yourself arguing with the outer channel bounds as if Basis MA Length: should be smoothing them.

• When an alert fires, you can state in one sentence which slot, which timeframe, which repaint posture, which trend length, and whether the HTF bar under the slot was confirmed.

That is the working read. Everything else on this page is in service of keeping it working. If two or three of these bullets are still uncomfortable, stay on this page until they are not — spending the time now is much cheaper than finding out in live conditions which part of the chart you were not actually reading.