Visible Average Price: One Line for the Screen

What it shows

A flat grey line across the chart with its price shown on the price axis. There is no curve: the value is the same on every candle, because it describes the whole visible stretch.

How Pravex works it out

1. Take the Source price of each candle (the close by default).
2. Look at the candles in the visible range of the chart, from the leftmost to the rightmost one.
3. Add up the prices of those candles that have a value and divide by their number. That is the average.
4. Draw it as one level across the whole chart. When you scroll or zoom, the visible range changes and the level is worked out again.

Settings

Setting	Default	What changing it does
Source	close	Which price of each candle goes into the average: open, high, low, close, (high + low) ÷ 2, (high + low + close) ÷ 3, (open + high + low + close) ÷ 4 or (high + low + 2 × close) ÷ 4.

How traders read it

Think of it as a centre of gravity for the picture you are looking at. Price far above the line has run away from where it spent most of its time; price back at the line is at the middle of the visible range. In a sideways market, traders often watch for price to return to it.

It is a quick way to check stretch. Zoom out to a month and the line sits at the month’s mean; zoom in to a day and it sits at the day’s. The same candle can be above one and below the other.

An example with made-up numbers: the visible candles average 2,350 and price is at 2,380: price is 30 above the average of what you see.

When it misleads

The level depends on what is on your screen, so it changes whenever you scroll, zoom or load more history, and two people looking at the same chart can see different lines. It treats every candle the same, with no weight for volume or time, and one run of very high prices at the left edge can drag it. It is not a support or resistance level, and it does not forecast anything. For a level that does not move with the screen, use a fixed-length average instead.

Questions and answers

What is the visible average price?

The average of the chosen price over all candles currently shown on the chart. It is a single level that updates when the visible range changes.

Why does the line move when I scroll?

Scrolling changes which candles are visible, and the line is the average of exactly those candles.

Is it the same as a moving average?

No. A moving average is a line that follows price, one value per candle, over a fixed number of candles. The visible average is one value for the whole screen.

Which price does it use?

The close by default. The Source setting switches it to the open, high, low or a blend of them.

Related: Correlation Coefficient, Performance, Seasonality, Volume Weighted Average Price, every indicator.