The rules
- Parabolic SAR (Wilder): the acceleration factor starts at 0.02 and rises by 0.02 at each new extreme of the trend, up to 0.2, the same as SAR (2, 2, 20) on FreeCharting. In an uptrend the SAR never rises above the previous two days’ lows (in a downtrend, never below their highs).
- Flip: when a day trades through the SAR, the trend reverses and the SAR restarts at the previous extreme. Days since flip counts days from that candle (0 = today).
- vs SAR: the close against today’s SAR level.
About this setup
- What it is
- Parabolic SAR (“stop and reverse”) puts a dot below price in an uptrend and above it in a downtrend. The dot moves toward price every day, faster as the trend makes new extremes, until price crosses it and it flips to the other side.
- How traders use it
- It is mainly used as a trailing stop: the SAR is the exit level for an open position, and a flip is read as a change of short-term trend. Traders often add a trend filter, such as taking only bullish flips above the 200-day average, or a trend-strength reading like ADX.
- Caveats
- In sideways markets the SAR flips back and forth and gives many false signals. It is always either long or short, so it says nothing about trend strength, and after a big move the stop can sit far from price.
Calculated in your browser from daily candles; crypto’s daily candle is still forming until 00:00 UTC, so today’s values can change. Not investment advice.
Frequently asked questions
Which markets can it scan?
Four, picked with the Market buttons above the table. Crypto (the default) scans the 250 busiest USDT pairs on Binance. Crypto perps scans the 200 busiest USDT perpetual futures on OKX. Both are free public data and need no key. US stocks scans about 600 US stocks and ETFs with your own free Alpaca key, and CME futures scans about 25 front-month CME Group contracts (stock indexes, Treasuries, oil, gas, metals, grains, livestock, currencies and CME bitcoin) with your own free Massive key.
Why do stocks and futures need a key?
Stock and futures prices are licensed data, so a website can’t hand them out for free. Alpaca (for stocks) and Massive (for futures) give anyone a free data key. Your key is saved only in your browser and sent only to that provider. See how to get a free Alpaca key and how to get a free Massive key for futures.
Is the data real-time?
Crypto and crypto perps are live from Binance and OKX, on daily candles that start at 00:00 UTC (today’s candle is still forming). Alpaca’s free stock data is 15 minutes behind the market, and Massive’s free futures plan is 8 hours delayed. Turn on auto-refresh next to the results to update the table in place every 30 seconds, minute or 5 minutes.