Pivot point - GetProfitable

The standard calculation takes the pivot as the average of the previous session's high, low and close, then derives support and resistance levels by reflecting the prior range around it. Everything is arithmetic; nothing is drawn by hand.

That objectivity is the appeal. Every trader using the same formula gets the same lines, which removes the argument about where a level is and makes the levels genuinely common reference points. They are most used in futures and index trading where sessions are well defined.

Pivots are not forecasts and carry no volume information. They are best treated as a grid of plausible reaction points to be combined with something else, and they lose meaning in markets without clean session-breaks such as continuously traded crypto.

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

Support, resistance and the flip. Support is a price where buyers keep stepping in and the fall stops; resistance is a price where sellers keep stepping in and the rise stops. Once price closes above an old ceiling, that same level often acts as the new floor.

Range versus trend. On the left price keeps bouncing between the same floor and ceiling, which is a range. On the right each high and each low is higher than the last, inside a pair of sloping lines called a channel.