Ichimoku Cloud

A whole trading view in one indicator: two midpoint lines, a cloud projected ahead, and a lagging line.

What it measures

Each line is the midpoint of the range over a window. The two leading spans are drawn ahead of the price, and the space between them is the cloud. The lagging span is today’s close drawn back in time.

How traders read it

Traders read price above the cloud as an uptrend and below it as a downtrend, a thick cloud as strong support or resistance, and the conversion line crossing the base line as a change in momentum. It works best on markets that trend; in a range the lines tangle.

Formula

conversion = (highest high + lowest low of the last conversionLinePeriods bars) / 2
base       = (highest high + lowest low of the last baseLinePeriods bars) / 2
spanA      = (conversion + base) / 2, drawn baseLinePeriods bars ahead
spanB      = (highest high + lowest low of the last leadingSpanPeriods bars) / 2, drawn baseLinePeriods bars ahead
lagging    = close, drawn laggingSpanPeriods bars back

The cloud is shaded green where span A is above span B and red where it is below.

Settings and output

Call: ichimokuCloud(conversionLinePeriods, baseLinePeriods, leadingSpanPeriods, laggingSpanPeriods)

Setting	Chart default
`conversionLinePeriods`: Tenkan-sen (Conversion Line) Periods	9
`baseLinePeriods`: Kijun-sen (Base Line) Periods	26
`leadingSpanPeriods`: Senkou Span B (Leading Span B) Periods	52
`laggingSpanPeriods`: Chikou Span (Lagging Span) Periods	26

What you get: a list of 7, in this order: 1. a number (“Ichimoku Tenkan-sen”); 2. a number (“Ichimoku Kijun-sen”); 3. a number (“Ichimoku Senkou Span A”); 4. a number (“Ichimoku Senkou Span B”); 5. a number (“Ichimoku Chikou Span”); 6. a [low, high] pair; 7. a [low, high] pair.

Warm-up: with ichimokuCloud(9, 26, 52, 26), it asks for 52 bars of history and a run-up of 1, and its first value came on bar 53 of the example data.

Chart

Ichimoku Cloud drawn by its own code on example prices

The prices are made up, hourly, and the same on every page, so the chart shows how the indicator behaves, not how a market behaved.

In an algorithm

function onIntervalClose() {
  const lines = ichimokuCloud(9, 26, 52, 26);
  const conversion = Number(lines[0]);
  const base = Number(lines[1]);
  const spanA = Number(lines[2]);
  const spanB = Number(lines[3]);
  if (conversion > base && CLOSE > spanA && CLOSE > spanB) {
    log("Conversion above base, close above both spans");
  }
}

An algorithm gets the spans for the bar that just closed, not the values drawn ahead of it on the chart.