Pivot Points on TradingView — Pine Script v5 Source

Pine can pull the prior day’s bar with request.security, making from-scratch daily pivots straightforward. See the explainer for the formulas.

What you’ll need

• A TradingView account (free tier is fine)
• The Pine Editor, on an intraday chart

The source

//@version=5
indicator("AlgoGen Pivot Points", shorttitle="AG PP", overlay=true)

// Prior daily bar (previous day's H/L/C).
pH = request.security(syminfo.tickerid, "D", high[1], lookahead=barmerge.lookahead_on)
pL = request.security(syminfo.tickerid, "D", low[1],  lookahead=barmerge.lookahead_on)
pC = request.security(syminfo.tickerid, "D", close[1], lookahead=barmerge.lookahead_on)

P   = (pH + pL + pC) / 3
rng = pH - pL

plot(P,               "P",  color=color.orange, style=plot.style_stepline)
plot(2 * P - pL,      "R1", color=color.red,    style=plot.style_stepline)
plot(2 * P - pH,      "S1", color=color.green,  style=plot.style_stepline)
plot(P + rng,         "R2", color=color.red,    style=plot.style_stepline)
plot(P - rng,         "S2", color=color.green,  style=plot.style_stepline)
plot(pH + 2*(P - pL), "R3", color=color.red,    style=plot.style_stepline)
plot(pL - 2*(pH - P), "S3", color=color.green,  style=plot.style_stepline)

request.security(..., "D", high[1], ...) pulls the prior daily high; the [1] plus a daily anchor is what gives you yesterday’s completed bar. The stepline style makes the levels hold flat across the day and jump at the session boundary — the horizontal levels from the output chart.

The built-in

Recent Pine also has ta.pivot_point_levels("Traditional", ...), which returns the levels for you if you’d rather not spell out the formulas.

A variant: Camarilla levels

Camarilla pivots pack tighter levels for range trading, using the prior close and range with fixed multipliers:

r3c = pC + rng * 1.1 / 4
r4c = pC + rng * 1.1 / 2
s3c = pC - rng * 1.1 / 4
s4c = pC - rng * 1.1 / 2
plot(r4c, "R4", color=color.red), plot(r3c, "R3", color=color.red)
plot(s3c, "S3", color=color.green), plot(s4c, "S4", color=color.green)

The R3/S3 levels are common reversal zones and R4/S4 breakout triggers in the Camarilla method — the same “levels from the prior bar” idea with different constants.

Gotchas

• [1] for the prior day. Requesting high (not high[1]) on the daily anchor gives today’s forming high — look-ahead. Use [1].
• lookahead_on here is intentional and safe because we already reference the prior, completed bar with [1]; this is the documented idiom for prior-period levels. (Never combine lookahead_on with the current period’s data.)
• Session convention. For 24-hour symbols, which “day” the anchor uses changes the levels.

Same indicator elsewhere: Python, MQL5, EasyLanguage, NinjaScript. Then test a pivot rule in AlgoGen.

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This post is educational, not financial advice. Indicators describe the past; they don’t predict the future. Backtest anything before you risk real money on it.