What are Pivot Points?

Professional traders and market makers use pivot points to identify important support and resistance levels. Simply put, a pivot point and its support/resistance levels are areas at which the direction of price movement can possibly change.

Pivot points are especially useful to short-term traders who are looking to take advantage of small price movements.

Pivot points can be used by both range-bound traders and breakout traders. Range-bound traders use pivot points to identify reversal points. Breakout traders use pivot points to recognize key levels that need to be broken for a move to be classified as a real deal breakout.

How to Calculate Pivot Points

The pivot point and associated support and resistance levels are calculated by using the last trading session’s open, high, low, and close. Since Forex is a 24-hour market, most traders use the New York closing time of 4:00pm EST as the previous day’s close.

The calculation for a pivot point is shown below:

Pivot point (PP) = (High + Low + Close) / 3

Support and resistance levels are then calculated off the pivot point like so:

First level support and resistance:

First support (S1) = (2*PP) – High

First resistance (R1) = (2*PP) – Low

Second level of support and resistance:

Second support (S2) = PP – (High – Low)

Second resistance (R2) = PP + (High – Low)

Similar Posts:

Share