1. Indicators Overview

Indicators are technical studies layered onto a chart pane — moving averages, oscillators, bands, volume tools, and more. Fractal Chart ships a large built-in library and also lets you author your own.

Overlays vs. own-pane studies

Indicators render in one of two places:

• Overlays draw on the price pane itself — for example moving averages, Bollinger Bands, VWAP, Supertrend, and Ichimoku.
• Own-pane studies draw in a sub-pane below price, on their own scale — for example RSI, MACD, the Stochastic, and volume oscillators.

A single study can plot several outputs (lines, histograms, bands, markers, and guide lines), and many expose values in the crosshair so you can read exact levels as you hover.

Built-in and custom

• The built-in library covers more than 100 studies across eight categories. Browse them in the Built-in Indicator Library, and see the pattern detectors in Chart Patterns.
• Custom indicators let you write your own calculations in TypeScript or JavaScript. That is covered in the Authoring section — start with Writing Custom Indicators.

Working with indicators

• Add and find studies with the indicator picker — see Adding & Managing Indicators.
• Tune a study's inputs, styling, and visibility — see Configuring Indicator Settings.

Indicators also feed other parts of the workspace: strategies can read indicator values during a backtest (see Composing Indicators & Patterns), and the AI assistant can add or adjust them on request (see Applying AI Chart Actions).

Next steps

Open the picker and add your first study.

Next: Adding & Managing Indicators