Fibonacci Tools

What this page is

The third button on the rail holds fifteen tools under two headings. The first heading, Fibonacci, has ten of them, and this page is about those. Nine of the ten are ladders of levels drawn from the same family of ratios; what changes is the direction the ladder runs and the shape it is drawn as.

Fib Retracement is the one everybody starts with: two clicks across a move, and horizontal levels at 0, 0.236, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618, 0.786, 1, 1.618 and 2.618 of it. Trend-Based Fib Extension takes three clicks — the start and end of a move, then the point the retracement ended — and projects that move forward from the third; it draws the same nine ratios, so an extension and a retracement over the same swing show the same ladder and differ only in what they measure from. Fib Channel takes a third click and runs the levels parallel to a sloping line instead of horizontally.

Two tools apply the ratios to time rather than price. Fib Time Zone drops vertical lines at Fibonacci multiples of the span you clicked — 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and 34 of it. Trend-Based Fib Time takes three clicks and projects its lines forward from the third.

The remaining five are geometric. Fib Speed Resistance Fan throws rays at each ratio, Fib Speed Resistance Arcs draws them as curves, Fib Circles as full rings, Fib Wedge as arcs sweeping between two legs, and Fib Spiral as a growth spiral out from the first anchor. All of these work in screen space rather than price space, because a circle is only round on the screen — the price and time axes have unrelated scales.

Nine of the ten carry a Levels tab in their settings dialog, which is where the ladder itself is edited: every level has a tick to show or hide it, a number you can retype, a colour box of its own and a cross to delete it, with Add level and Reset levels at the bottom.

On the retracement and the extension that tab lists the whole ratio ladder, not just what is drawn — twenty-four levels from 0 out to 4.764, with the nine above ticked and the other fifteen waiting. Turning 4.236 on is a tick rather than typing it into a blank row.

The colour box is the whole look of that one line, not just its colour: it opens on a palette, a transparency slider, four thicknesses and the line types. So 0.618 can be heavy and solid while 0.786 stays a faint hairline, on the same object. A level you have not touched follows the object-wide Line setting on the Style tab; the moment you set one here, that level goes its own way.

Text on the same tab moves every level caption to the other end of its line. Left is where they have always sat; Right puts them against the right-hand end, which is what you want when the fib is drawn back over old candles and the labels were covering them.

The second heading, Gann, holds five tools that arrived on this button when their own rail button was retired: Gann Box, Gann Square Fixed, Gann Square, Gann Fan and Gann Square of Nine. They belong here because they do the same job with a different set of numbers — cut a span at fixed ratios, draw every level in its own colour — but they are read differently enough to have a page of their own, and nothing about them is repeated here.

Why it helps you

When to use it, and where to find it

• After a clean impulse move has finished and a pullback has started — that is the moment a retracement is placed.
• When you are choosing where to take profit, using the extension ladder rather than a round number.
• When price is travelling inside a slope rather than sideways: Fib Channel puts the same ratios on the diagonal.
• Not during the move itself. The high or low you would anchor to has not happened yet, and the levels will all move once it does.

Try it — a short walkthrough

1. 1
   Draw the retracement in the direction of the move

   Open the third rail button, choose Fib Retracement from the Fibonacci heading, then click the start of the move and its end — low then high for an up leg. The horizontal ladder appears between them, each level in its own colour. 0 sits on the SECOND click and 1 on the first, because the numbers say how much of the move has been given back — so 0.618 is a pullback of most of it, and the levels past 1 (1.618, 2.618) print beyond where you started, below the low on an up leg.
2. 2
   Turn on the prices

   Double-click the object to open its settings dialog, go to the Levels tab and tick Prices. Each caption then carries the actual rupee level as well as the ratio.
3. 3
   Prune the ladder to what you use

   In the same tab, untick the levels you never look at. A retracement showing three lines is a level; one showing seven is wallpaper. Reset levels puts the tool's own set back.
4. 4
   Project a target with the extension

   Choose Trend-Based Fib Extension and click three points: the same two as the retracement, then where the pullback ended. Its ladder is that first move measured out again from the third click, so 1.618 sits well beyond the high rather than inside it.
5. 5
   Put the ratios on a slope

   Choose Fib Channel. The first two clicks draw the trend line, the third sets how far the parallel set of levels sits from it — the same three-click shape as a Parallel Channel, with the ladder filled in between.
6. 6
   Scroll past Fibonacci for the Gann set

   The same flyout carries a second heading, Gann, with five more tools. They take one or two clicks instead of the fib set's two or three, and the Angle Tools page in this document covers all five.

Every part, up close

The Chart page — the Fibonacci and Gann sets are behind the third rail button. Each part with a close-up of the real screen; the numbers match the dots on the picture.

1

Third button down

The third button opens a flyout with two headings: Fibonacci with ten tools, then Gann with five. This page is about the first ten.

2

The move you measure

The ratios do nothing on their own — they are stretched across the swing you click out on the candles, so a different swing gives different levels.

3

Reading a level off

A retracement ladder is horizontal lines at prices, so the scale on the right is where you see what 0.618 of the move actually costs.

Reading the numbers

• Fib Retracement — 2 clicks. Horizontal levels across the span at 0, 0.236, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618, 0.786, 1, 1.618 and 2.618. The Levels tab offers the rest of the ladder out to 4.764, unticked.
• Trend-Based Fib Extension — 3 clicks. The first two measure a move, the third says where to project it from. Same nine ratios as the retracement, and the same ladder behind them.
• Fib Channel — 3 clicks. Two for the trend line, one for the offset. Levels at 0.382, 0.618 and 1 run parallel to the line rather than horizontally.
• Fib Time Zone — 2 clicks. Vertical lines at 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and 34 times the span you clicked, measured forward from the first anchor.
• Trend-Based Fib Time — 3 clicks. Vertical lines at 0.618, 1, 1.618, 2.618 and 4.236 of the first span, projected forward from the third anchor.
• Fib Speed Resistance Fan — 2 clicks. Rays from the first anchor at 0.236, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618, 0.786 and 1 of the box between the two clicks. Two rays per level — one through the box’s vertical edge and one through its horizontal edge — and the wedges between neighbouring rays are now shaded, in the outer level’s colour.
• Fib Speed Resistance Arcs — 2 clicks. The same idea drawn as curves at 0.382, 0.5, 0.618 and 1, with the rings between them tinted.
• Fib Circles — 2 clicks. Full rings centred on the first anchor at 0.236, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618, 1 and 1.618 of the radius the second sets.
• Fib Spiral — 2 clicks. A growth spiral out from the first anchor, scaled by the second. The one tool here with no editable level list, because it has no discrete levels.
• Fib Wedge — 3 clicks. Two legs from the first anchor, with arcs sweeping between them at 0.236, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618, 0.786 and 1 of the shorter leg.
• The shading on the Speed Resistance Fan is new, and it is what finally makes the Background row on that tool mean something. Every fib tool has always offered a background colour, a visibility switch and a transparency slider; the fan alone painted no fill for them to act on, so all three did nothing. It now tiles the whole quadrant between its rays, and which level owns a band is not arbitrary — it is the outer one, so a fan and an arcs tool drawn over the same swing shade in the same colours.
• Every level is drawn in its own colour, and the colour is keyed to the ratio, so 0.618 comes out the same shade on a retracement, a fan and a wedge. Setting the object colour from the property bar stamps that one colour onto every level; per-level colours in the Levels tab still win.
• Only Fib Retracement and Trend-Based Fib Extension measure along a price range, so only those two offer Prices, Reverse, Extend left and Extend right. The geometric tools have no price to print, no direction to reverse and no horizontal run to extend, so those switches are simply not shown for them.
• The flyout carries two headings and nothing above them. Fibonacci lists these ten; Gann lists five more — Gann Box, Gann Square Fixed, Gann Square, Gann Fan and Gann Square of Nine, in that order. The Levels tab is a Fibonacci privilege and none of the five has one, which is the sharpest practical difference between the two halves of this button.

What it does not do

• The ratios are a convention, not a law. They work partly because a great many people draw the same lines, which is a real effect and a fragile one.
• A retracement is only meaningful once the move it measures has finished. Anchored to a high that is still being made, every level moves under you.
• Fib Spiral has no Levels tab. It is the one tool in the Fibonacci half the settings dialog does not treat as a level ladder, because a spiral is continuous.
• The geometric tools work in screen pixels. Zoom the chart or change the price axis and a circle stays round while the prices it crosses change, which is inherent to drawing a circle on axes with unrelated units.
• This button is now a shared one. The Gann tools underneath the Fibonacci set take one or two clicks rather than two or three, so a habit of clicking three times will place one of them and then start a second object with the third click. Watch the heading you picked from.
• All fifteen tools can be drawn on the Chart page, so nothing in this flyout is greyed out. If the engine ever could not draw a tool, its row would be disabled with a tooltip saying so.

Questions people ask