Pivot Points
Reference levels computed mechanically from the prior period's high, low and close. Their appeal is that they are fixed in advance and identical for everyone.
MadStockAlerts Research · Updated August 28, 2026
What to take away
- The central pivot is the average of the prior period's high, low and close.
- Support and resistance levels are derived arithmetically from it.
- They are entirely objective, unlike hand-drawn levels.
- They are most used intraday, computed from the previous session.
- Different variants exist, so naming the one in use avoids confusion.
MAD Academy Training Video · 0:44
Levels Calculated Before the Bell
Pivots are the one set of levels that exist before the session opens, which is exactly what makes them useful and what limits them.
This lesson is part of a Stock Alerts + Tools plan.
The arithmetic
P = (previous high + previous low + previous close) / 3
R1 = 2P - previous low; S1 = 2P - previous high
- further levels extend the same construction outward
Everything is fixed once the prior period closes. The levels for tomorrow are known tonight and do not move during the session, which is the property that makes them useful as a plan rather than as a reaction.
Objectivity as the point
A hand-drawn trendline depends on which points were chosen. A pivot does not: everyone computing it from the same session gets the same number to the cent. Whatever else is true of these levels, they are not curve-fitted after the fact.
That property is rarer than it sounds. Most of the levels traders discuss are drawn, and drawn levels are chosen by somebody who already has a view. A level that could be computed by a script before the session opens cannot have been fitted to the session's outcome.
Scroll the chart sideways to see all of it.
Variants
- Standard (floor trader): the formulation above, the most widely used.
- Fibonacci: the same central pivot with support and resistance placed at Fibonacci fractions of the prior range.
- Camarilla: a tighter set, built for mean-reversion within a session.
- Woodie: weights the close more heavily than the standard formula.
Because different platforms default to different variants, two traders discussing the same level may be discussing different numbers. Naming the variant is worth the words, and a level that appears in several variants at once is one more participants are looking at.
Period choice
Daily pivots computed from yesterday's session are the standard intraday use. Weekly and monthly pivots exist and are computed identically from the longer period, and they are correspondingly more durable and less frequently touched.
A weekly pivot sitting close to a daily one is the same kind of confluence that makes any level more interesting: more participants, on more timeframes, are watching the same price.
The variants, and which is which
Several formulations are in common use. They differ in how the central pivot is computed and how the supports and resistances are spaced from it, and a platform's default is rarely stated on the chart.
| Variant | Central pivot | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (floor) | (high + low + close) / 3 | The most common. Levels spaced symmetrically |
| Fibonacci | The same pivot | Levels spaced by Fibonacci ratios of the prior range |
| Woodie | Weights the close more heavily | Shifts the pivot toward where the session ended |
| Camarilla | The same pivot | Levels much closer together, aimed at intraday reversion |
| DeMark | Depends on where the close sat relative to the open | Produces only one support and one resistance |
The differences are not cosmetic: Camarilla levels sit far closer to the pivot than standard ones, so the same session produces materially different lines. Two participants reading pivots on the same security can be watching prices several percent apart.
This weakens the coordination argument that is the main case for pivots. The levels are objective given a formula, and the formula is not universal, so the shared reference is shared only among users of the same variant.
Which period the levels are computed from
Pivots are derived from a completed period's high, low and close, and the period chosen determines both how far apart the levels sit and how long they remain relevant.
| Period | Levels valid for | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | One session | Intraday reference points |
| Weekly | One week | Swing horizons, and a check on daily levels |
| Monthly | One month | Position-level context, and much wider spacing |
| Quarterly and yearly | The period | Rarely used, and occasionally coincides with round numbers |
A practical consequence is that levels from different periods stack. A daily support that coincides with a weekly pivot is a reference point that two different groups of participants computed independently, which is the closest thing to corroboration this family of tools offers.
The whole case for pivots rests on their being computed identically by everyone from published data, so the period and the variant have to be stated for a level to mean anything to anyone else.