Williams Alligator on a Live Gold Chart

What it shows

Three lines named Jaw, Teeth and Lips. The Jaw is the slowest, built on 13 candles, the Teeth uses 8 and the Lips 5. Each line is drawn a few candles to the right of where it was worked out, so it sits ahead of the candle it belongs to. There is no separate pane and no fixed level lines: the lines sit right on the price chart.

How Pravex works it out

Every candle gets a midpoint, (high + low) ÷ 2. All three lines are built from this one series, not from the close.
Each line is an SMMA (RMA) of the midpoint: the first value is a plain average of the first N midpoints, and every new value keeps (N − 1)/N of the old line and adds 1/N of the new midpoint. N is 13 for the Jaw, 8 for the Teeth and 5 for the Lips.
Each line is then moved to the right by its own offset: 8 candles for the Jaw, 5 for the Teeth, 3 for the Lips. The shift changes where the line is drawn, not what it is worked out from. A negative offset would move it left instead.

Settings

Setting	Default	What changing it does
Jaw average length	13	How many candles the Jaw average covers. A bigger number makes it slower and smoother.
Teeth average length	8	How many candles the Teeth average covers.
Lips average length	5	How many candles the Lips average covers. It is the quickest of the three, so it reacts first when price turns.
Jaw shift forward	8	How many candles the Jaw is drawn to the right. Positive moves it forward, negative moves it back, and 0 draws it where it was worked out.
Teeth shift forward	5	The same forward shift for the Teeth line.
Lips shift forward	3	The same forward shift for the Lips line.

How traders read it

The usual reading starts with the order of the lines. Lips on top, then Teeth, then Jaw below means the quick average is above the slow ones, which is how an up move looks. The reverse order matches a down move. The wider the gap between them, the stronger the lean.

When the three lines crowd together and cross each other, the averages disagree about direction. Alligator users call this the sleeping phase and usually wait it out until the lines pull apart again.

Because of the shifts, the lines run ahead of price on the chart. A candle that closes above the Lips is not touching a line that was worked out on that candle; it is meeting a value from a few candles earlier.

When it misleads

All three lines are slow averages, so the Alligator confirms a move after a good part of it has happened. In choppy gold the lines cross again and again and the order flips before any trade could use it. The forward shift also makes the picture look like a forecast. It is not one: the lines are old values moved to the right, and nothing in them knows what the next candle will do.

Questions and answers

What do Jaw, Teeth and Lips mean?

They are three SMMA averages of the candle midpoint with lengths 13, 8 and 5. The Jaw is the slowest and the Lips the quickest, so the order they sit in tells you which way the quick average has moved against the slow ones.

Why are the lines drawn ahead of price?

Each line is shifted to the right by its offset: 8 candles for the Jaw, 5 for the Teeth and 3 for the Lips. Set the offsets to 0 to see the plain averages at the candle where they were worked out.

Can I make the Alligator react quicker on gold?

Shorten the three lengths and the shifts together, for example 8, 5 and 3 with shifts of 5, 3 and 2 (example values). The lines tangle less often in slow hours but also flip order more in a choppy session. Pravex starts at 13, 8 and 5 with shifts of 8, 5 and 3.

Why does the Alligator use the candle midpoint and not the close?

Our code feeds all three lines (high + low) ÷ 2. The midpoint counts a long wick as half of the candle’s range, so a spike that closes back inside still moves the lines a little, while a close-based average would ignore where the wick reached.