Chart reference · Drawing Tools

Pitchforks

A pitchfork turns three swing points into a whole corridor: one median line down the middle and two tines either side, all drawn from the same three clicks.

What

What this page is

The second button on the drawing rail holds five tools and nothing else: the Andrews pitchfork, its three origin variants and the pitchfan. Every one of them takes exactly three clicks — a pivot, then the two swing points that follow it — and the tool builds the rest. That consistency is the whole character of this button; there is no two-click tool hiding in it to catch you out.

The idea behind all five is the same. Take a significant high or low, call it A, then the reaction low and high after it, B and C. Draw a line from A through the midpoint of B and C — that is the median line — and run two lines parallel to it through B and C themselves. Price that respects the structure tends to travel between the tines and to return to the median.

The four pitchfork variants differ in exactly one thing: where the median line starts. The standard Pitchfork starts at A. The Shifted Pitchfork lifts the origin to the midpoint of A and B on both axes. The Modified Shifted Pitchfork halves only the price, keeping the time at A. The Inside Pitchfork uses the midpoint of A and B as its origin with the tines anchored on the midpoint of B and C. When the origin has moved away from A, a faint dashed leader is drawn from A into it so you can still see where the structure came from.

The Pitchfan is the odd one out. It shares the same three anchors but throws Fibonacci-spaced rays from A across the B to C span — at 0.25, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618 and 0.75 — instead of drawing parallel tines.

If you opened this button looking for a Gann box, a square or a fan, they are behind the next button down. The Fibonacci flyout has two headings, and the second one, Gann, holds all five of those tools. They take two clicks rather than three, they are read in a completely different way, and this document gives them a page of their own.

Why

Why it helps you

If you trade

Days to weeks · you care about timing and the crowd.

The median line is the part that carries information. A market inside a pitchfork usually spends most of its time drifting back toward it, so a touch of a tine with the median far away is a different setup from a touch with the median close.
The failure is as useful as the fit. Price that leaves a well-fitted pitchfork and does not come back has said something about the trend that no oscillator will tell you as early.
Try the Shifted variant when the standard fork leaves the median obviously above or below the actual traffic. Shifting the origin is exactly what that variant is for, and it costs nothing to place both and delete the worse one.
The Pitchfan is the version to reach for when the reaction after your pivot was violent — Fibonacci-spaced rays fan out fast enough to keep up with a steep move that parallel tines would lose.

If you invest

Months to years · you care about quality and price paid.

On weekly or monthly candles a pitchfork drawn from a major low is a way of asking whether a long uptrend is still travelling at the pace it set out at.
The shaded band between the outer tines gives you a visual “normal range” for the trend, which is more useful over years than any single line.
If a stock you hold has spent two years above the median and then a year below it, that is a change in character worth investigating even though nothing has broken.
Place one and leave it. A pitchfork you re-anchor every time it stops fitting is not measuring anything.

When · Where

When to use it, and where to find it

After a clear pivot followed by a clear reaction — the three points have to be obvious, or the fork is arbitrary.
When you want a target and a stop from the same structure: the tines give both without a second tool.
During a trend that has been running long enough for a corridor to be a fair description of it. Choppy, directionless price gives a meaningless fork.
When you are checking whether a pullback is normal. Inside the fork it usually is.

How to

Try it — a short walkthrough

1
Find three points before you click anything
Pick the pivot the move started from, then the reaction low and the reaction high that followed it. If you cannot see all three clearly on the chart, a pitchfork will not help.
2
Place the standard fork first
Open the second rail button and choose Pitchfork, the first tool in the list. Click your three points in order. The median, the two tines and the shaded band between them all appear at once, projected two and a half times the length of the origin-to-midpoint run.
3
Switch the magnet on if the anchors matter
The magnet button below Undo pulls each click onto the nearest open, high, low or close. On a fork the anchors are the whole tool, so a click that lands between two candles moves everything.
4
Try a variant when the median looks wrong
If price is clearly not travelling around the median line, place a Shifted Pitchfork or a Modified Shifted Pitchfork on the same three points and compare. The dashed leader from the original pivot shows how far the origin moved.
5
Adjust rather than redraw
Select the object with the cursor and drag any of the three handles. The whole structure recomputes as you move, so you can nudge the third anchor onto a better swing without starting again.

In detail

Every part, up close

The Chart page — the pitchforks are the second button on the drawing rail. Each part with a close-up of the real screen; the numbers match the dots on the picture.

Second button down

The second button opens a flyout headed Pitchforks, with the four pitchfork variants and the pitchfan. Five tools, one heading, nothing else behind it.

Three clicks, A B C

You supply only the pivot and the two swings after it on the candles; the median line and both tines are worked out from those three points.

Detail

Reading the numbers

Pitchfork — 3 clicks. The classic Andrews fork: median from the first anchor through the midpoint of the other two, with parallel tines through each of them.
Shifted Pitchfork — 3 clicks. Identical, except the median starts at the midpoint of the first two anchors on both the time and the price axis. A dashed leader shows the shift.
Modified Shifted Pitchfork — 3 clicks. The origin is halved on the price axis only; the time stays at the first anchor. Use it when the price level is wrong but the timing is not.
Inside Pitchfork — 3 clicks. Origin at the midpoint of the first two anchors, with the tines anchored on the midpoint of the second and third. The tightest of the four.
Pitchfan — 3 clicks. The same three anchors, but Fibonacci-spaced rays from the first anchor across the span between the other two, at 0.25, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618 and 0.75.
The four pitchforks shade the corridor between their outer tines, so they carry a background colour, a background visibility switch and an opacity slider in the settings dialog alongside the usual line controls. The Pitchfan draws only rays and has no fill, so those three controls are not offered on it.
A bar is drawn between the second and third anchors on every pitchfork. It is the handle for the pair, not a level.
The flyout carries one heading, reading Pitchforks, over all five tools. That single heading is the category’s own name: this group is short enough not to need signposting inside it, and a panel with no heading at all would be the only unlabelled one on the rail.

Honest limits

What it does not do

A pitchfork is only as good as its three anchors. Move any one of them by a couple of bars and the median swings, which is why two people can draw two forks on the same chart and disagree completely.
The tines are projected a fixed two and a half times the run from the origin to the midpoint. They are not a forecast about how long the structure lasts, and price beyond that reach is simply out of the drawing.
There is nothing automatic here. Nothing checks that your three points are real pivots, and nothing tells you when the fork has stopped working.
The Pitchfan’s ratios are fixed at five levels and are not editable in the Levels tab, because it is not part of the Fibonacci family as the settings dialog defines it.
All five 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.

FAQ

Questions people ask

Which of the four pitchforks should I use?

Start with the standard one. If price is clearly not travelling around its median, place a Shifted or Modified Shifted on the same three points and keep whichever fits the traffic better. Inside is the tightest and suits fast, shallow structures.

Why is my median line nowhere near the price?

Almost always because the first anchor is not really the pivot the move began from. Drag its handle onto the actual extreme and the whole fork recomputes.

Is the shaded band a target?

No. It is the corridor between the two outer tines, drawn so the structure reads at a glance. Treat a tine as a place to pay attention, not as a price the market owes you.

Where are the Gann tools?

Behind the next button down, the one labelled Fibonacci and Angle Tools. Its flyout has two headings — Fibonacci with ten tools, then Gann with the box, the two squares, the fan and the Square of Nine. They were put with the Fibonacci set because both families cut a swing at fixed ratios and draw every level in its own colour, which is a closer relation than a pitchfork.