The Trend Chameleon, originally developed by Alex Cole for the Bloomberg Terminal, is a powerful tool designed to simplify trend identification and illuminate potential trading opportunities. It leverages a clear visual display to decode market movements, making it useful for traders of all experience levels.
🟠 Overview
Here's an illustration of how the indicator performs for ES (S&P 500 E-mini Future) on the daily chart:
Trend Chameleon employs a color-coded candle scheme, with each color corresponding to a specific level of trend strength. Purple candles represent the strongest bearish trends, while teal candles signal the most potent bullish momentum. Between these extremes lie red, yellow, and green candles, providing a spectrum of trend direction. This intuitive color coding allows you to quickly grasp the prevailing market sentiment and identify potential entry and exit points for your trades.
🟠 Algorithm
Under the hood, Trend Chameleon evaluates four conditions to provide a directional strength score:
1. Whether the MACD value is positive. 2. Whether the SMA 50 of open prices is above the SMA 50 of the close prices. 3. Whether the ROC indicator value is positive. 4. Whether the current close price is above the SMA 50.
The total number of fulfilled conditions (0 to 4) determines the trend strength, with 0 indicating the most bearish and 4 signifying the strongest bullish trend. This score is then visually represented by coloring the bars on the chart.
🟠 Note
If you don't see the bars being properly colored after adding this indicator, please ensure Trend Chameleon is positioned on top of all other indicators in your chart. This can be easily achieved by hovering over the indicator's name, clicking the three dots, selecting "Visual Order," and then choosing "Bring to front."