ALMA Indicator on a Live Gold Chart

What it shows

With the defaults the bell’s peak sits near the newest candles, so the ALMA follows price closely and stays fairly smooth.

How Pravex works it out

1. Take the last values of the source price in the window, the close by default. The default window is 9 candles.
2. Place the peak of the bell at Bell position × (window − 1), counted from the oldest candle in the window. With 0.85 and a window of 9, the peak is at 6.8 on a scale from 0 (oldest) to 8 (newest).
3. Set the width to window ÷ Bell sharpness (sigma in the original formula), which is 1.5 at the defaults. Each candle gets a weight from the bell curve: highest at the peak, falling away on both sides.
4. The ALMA is the weighted average of the window, the weights added up and divided out so they sum to 1.

Settings

Setting	Default	What changing it does
Candles in the window	9	How many candles are in the window. A bigger window is smoother and slower.
Bell position	0.85	Where the peak of the bell sits in the window, from 0 at the oldest candle to 1 at the newest. Near 1 the line follows price closely; near 0 it leans toward older candles and is smoother and later. It does not shift the drawn line sideways.
Bell sharpness	6	How narrow the bell is. A larger number gives a narrower peak, so fewer candles carry the weight; a smaller one spreads the weight out and the line behaves more like a plain average.
Source	close	The price under the bell. Since the bell already smooths well, switching from close to hl2 mainly shifts the line toward candle middles on wicky gold sessions.

How traders read it

The ALMA is a smoother trend line that stays near price. The slope tells the direction, and price crossing the line is watched like a crossing of any moving average.

The two extra dials are the point of it. Sliding the peak toward the newest candle gives a quicker line and sliding it back gives a calmer one; on 15-minute gold you might want a lower position than on daily candles.

When it misleads

More dials mean more ways to fit the past. A setting that looks perfect on last week of gold may do nothing for next week. With the peak near the newest candle the line also reacts to a single large candle, and with a narrow bell only a few candles carry weight, so it behaves like a short average whatever the window says.

Questions and answers

What do the ALMA offset and sigma do?

The offset, Bell position in Pravex (0 to 1), sets where the weight peaks in the window, from the oldest candle to the newest. Sigma, Bell sharpness here, sets how narrow that peak is.

Does the ALMA offset move the line sideways?

No. Unlike the Offset on the SMA, it only changes the weights. The line stays aligned with the candles.

What happens with the bell position at 0.5?

The peak moves to the middle of the window, so the line weights candles from four or five hours ago most on 1-hour gold. It turns smoother and later, close to a centred average.

Why does a single big candle move the ALMA so much?

At the defaults the bell peaks near the newest candle and is narrow, so two or three candles carry most of the weight. A large one landing there pulls the line hard; lower the sharpness to spread the weight out.

Related: Moving Average Exponential, Hull Moving Average, Moving Average Weighted, Simple Moving Average, every indicator.