Troubleshooting

A map from symptom to cause to fix for Axiom MA CTX. This page is written for the reader whose chart is not behaving as expected, who does not have the time or the patience to reread the whole pack, and who needs to l...

Written By Axiom Admin

Last updated 22 days ago

Troubleshooting

A map from symptom to cause to fix for Axiom MA CTX. This page is written for the reader whose chart is not behaving as expected, who does not have the time or the patience to reread the whole pack, and who needs to land on the right diagnosis fast — ideally while the trade is still retrievable.

Before the table, one framing. Almost every surprise this tool hands you falls into one of two buckets. Either the configuration is doing exactly what it was asked to do and the surprise lives in the reader's model of what was asked, or the tool is deliberately refusing to render a configuration whose output would be dishonest. A third bucket — the tool is genuinely wrong — does exist, but it is the least likely of the three, and diagnosing it starts with ruling out the first two. Start with the posture that the chart is reporting truthfully, then work out which configuration or which mental model produced the surprise.

Symptom → cause → fix

The chart is blank and TradingView shows an error bar naming a slot

What it reads. Something like MA 01 timeframe cannot be lower than the chart timeframe. The slot name in the error text is the slot you configured last.

Cause. That slot's TimeFrame: is set to a value strictly below the chart's own timeframe. The guard is deliberate — the indicator refuses to compute an MA on a below-chart granularity and draw it on chart bars.

Fix. Open the named slot. Set its TimeFrame: to empty (inherit chart timeframe) or to a string greater than or equal to the current chart timeframe. If you did not mean to change the slot's timeframe, the simplest fix is to clear the input. The chart will render again immediately.

Further reading. MTF & Repainting treats the guard end-to-end and explains why a below-chart slot would produce misleading output.

A slot's line drifts inside its HTF bar

What it looks like. A higher-timeframe slot — say the 60-minute purple Slot 03 — is moving, sometimes flipping colour, inside the same 60-minute window.

Cause. That slot's On Bar Close? is OFF. Under OFF, the slot reports the live HTF value, which can drift until the HTF bar closes.

Fix. Open the slot's MA NN PU group. Set On Bar Close? to true. The line will now step only at HTF close. If you meant to run the slot live, leave OFF on and treat the line as a live read — not a confirmed one — for the rest of that HTF bar.

Further reading. MTF & Repainting covers the ON/OFF tradeoff and the verification drill.

The blended line moved when no slot line on the chart moved

What it looks like. You enabled or disabled a slot whose plot was hidden, or changed the weight on a hidden slot, and the blended line visibly shifted without any visible slot changing.

Cause. A hidden slot is still participating in the blend. Hide MA NN Plot: removes the line from the chart but does not remove the slot from the blend math.

Fix. If you want the slot out of the blend, set its Blended Weight: to zero. If you want it out of everything, disable it. Do not use hide for exclusion.

Further reading. Visuals & Logic spells out the hidden-plot trap. Limitations & Trust Boundaries treats blend honesty.

An alignment alert ("All MA Slots Uptrend") is silent despite apparent agreement

What it looks like. Three visible slots are in uptrend colour; the "All MA Slots Uptrend" alert is silent.

Cause. Almost always one of three:

  • A hidden enabled slot is voting in the other direction. Alignment counts every enabled slot, visible or not, and a single disagreement is enough to hold the alert. The visible chart looks aligned; the count does not match.

  • A slot's MA is na — common on early bars, on a fresh cross-ticker slot whose session is closed, or on a symbol that has not yet delivered enough history to satisfy the slot's length. Slots with na MAs drop out of the active alignment counter for that bar; the aggregate can still fire if every remaining active slot is voting the same direction and at least one active slot exists.

  • The chart bar has not closed. The alert is gated by chart-bar-confirmed state. On higher timeframes this gate can feel like silence because the bar is still open.

Fix. Open the Data Window and read the count plots — Active Uptrend Count, Active Downtrend Count — against the number of enabled slots you expect to be voting. If a hidden active slot is voting against the visible stack, decide whether to disable it or accept that the alignment alert will correctly hold. If a slot is na, understand that it is absent from the aggregate for that bar rather than holding the alert open. If the chart bar is still open, wait for it to close.

Further reading. Alerts for the full alignment rule, Visuals & Logic for the hidden-plot trap.

The cross-ticker slot's line sits far above or below chart price

What it looks like. A slot with Optional Ticker: populated is drawing a line well away from chart price, sometimes at the top or bottom of the visible range.

Cause. Usually not a bug — usually a combination of the alternate symbol's smoothed shape and the current close-ratio factor. The scaling is a single multiplication; when the two symbols' scales are far apart, the rescaled line can land far from chart price and still be computed correctly. If the scale ratio cannot be computed, the slot can also fall back to the raw requested MA value, which may look abruptly off-scale.

Less commonly: the alternate symbol is in an asynchronous session and the scale factor is stale; or the symbol pairing has drifted enough that the ratio does not produce a useful read.

Fix. Confirm the alternate symbol is in session. Consider whether the cross-ticker pairing is still appropriate during the current session. If the pairing is a context study, leave Blended Weight: at zero so the scaled line does not drag the blend while it sits far from price.

Further reading. Limitations & Trust Boundaries on cross-ticker honesty. For the Geeks on the scaling mental model.

A slot line is missing, collapsed, or effectively invisible and the slot is enabled

What it looks like. You enabled a slot, confirmed its inputs, and no readable line appears near price. It may be hidden, unavailable in the Data Window, overlapped by another line, or collapsed far away from the visible chart range.

Cause. One of the following:

  • Hide MA NN Plot: is true. The slot is computed but not drawn.

  • The slot's MA is na on every visible bar, usually because the MA type and length combination needs more history than the chart has, or because the slot is pointing at an Optional Ticker: whose session is closed.

  • The plotted value is collapsing toward zero or far off-scale because the requested value is unavailable or the cross-ticker scale ratio cannot be computed cleanly.

  • The fixed slot colour is visually close to another plotted line, so the line is present but hard to separate.

Fix. Start with the hide toggle. Then open the Data Window and look at the slot's value. If it is na, scroll the chart back to load more history, change the MA type or length, or confirm the optional ticker is in session. If it is a number but you cannot see the line, increase line width, check whether another slot is sitting on top of it, and confirm the value is not far outside the visible price range.

Further reading. Settings for the hide / width knobs and Visuals & Logic for fixed slot colours.

A per-slot trend alert fires on a read you thought was confirmed

What it looks like. A trend alert arrives, you look at the chart, the slot's HTF bar is still forming, and the trend state the alert referenced is no longer what the slot is showing.

Cause. The slot's On Bar Close? is OFF. The alert fired on a chart-bar-confirmed condition that used the live HTF value. The HTF bar has not closed and the slot continued to drift.

Fix. If you wanted a confirmed alert, set the slot's On Bar Close? to ON. Future alerts on this slot will use the confirmed HTF value.

Further reading. Alerts on the bar-gating distinction. MTF & Repainting on what OFF costs.

The slot colour flickers repeatedly without obvious reason

What it looks like. A slot's line oscillates between up and down colour on successive bars with the MA itself barely moving.

Cause. Trend Length: is set very short — often 1 or 2 — on a timeframe where small-step changes in the MA cross and re-cross the Trend Length-bar-back value. The colour flickers because the comparison window is too short to be stable.

Fix. Lengthen Trend Length: on that slot. Values of 3 or higher are typically enough to calm the flicker without making the trend read sluggish. Alternatively, accept the flicker if you specifically want the fast read — but expect the per-slot trend alerts to be noisy.

Further reading. Settings for the Length versus Trend Length distinction; Visuals & Logic for the mechanics of the trend comparison.

I searched the inputs for a Scale Mode selector and cannot find it

What happened. You hovered the Optional Ticker: area of the inputs dialog, or read the raw source, and saw a tooltip mentioning three scale modes — "None," "Anchored To Chart," "Dynamic To Chart." You went looking for the selector and could not find it.

Cause. The selector is not there. The source declares a tooltip constant describing three modes; the shipped build does not expose a matching input.enum. Every cross-ticker slot uses the same single close-ratio scaling path. The tooltip describes behaviour the current build does not implement.

Fix. Nothing to fix. This is a candor item, not a defect. The manual's position on it is documented in For the Geeks — read that page's candor note for the full story. If a future trim wires the enum or removes the tooltip, that release's manual will update.

Nothing looks wrong, but the tool is behaving differently from a setup I saw documented elsewhere

Cause. This manual covers the trim shorttitled Axiom MA CTX — the ten-slot context-breadth build. Base ships with fewer slots, a smaller type palette, and no cross-ticker support. STR sits after CTX where it exists, with fewer slots because structure around the blend costs processing. A setup guide written against another trim may reference controls that do not exist in this trim, or vice versa.

Fix. Open the inputs dialog and check the controls you actually have. If your trim has fewer slot groups than this manual describes, you are on a different build. The shorttitle in your chart legend tells you which trim is loaded.

When a symptom is really a trust boundary

Several of the symptoms above have a fix and a trust-boundary reading. The fix gets the tool doing what you configured. The trust-boundary reading reminds you of what you are relying on the tool for.

If you keep running into the same "symptom" after applying the fix, the fix may not be what you need. The trust-boundary reading is.

When to get help

Support channel to be confirmed in a later revision of this manual. If the behaviour on your chart does not match what this page or any other page in this pack describes, and the configuration you have is the configuration you intended, the discrepancy is worth reporting rather than living with. The pack is written against the shipped script; where they disagree, the script is authoritative and the pack is the artefact that needs updating. Naming a gap is how the next revision closes it.