How Are Pivot Points Calculated on a Futures Chart?

In the formula Sierra Chart uses by default, a pivot point is the average of three numbers from the period that just finished: its high, its low and its close. The support and resistance lines drawn around it are further arithmetic on those same three figures and on the distance between the high and the low.

That is the whole calculation in the default case, and other variants shuffle the inputs. The harder part is where the input numbers come from, because a futures contract trades nearly around the clock and the words "yesterday's close" do not pick out a single price on their own.

What is a pivot point on a futures chart?

On a chart, a pivot point is a single calculated price drawn as a horizontal line, with a ladder of further lines above and below it labelled resistance and support, which is what Sierra Chart's pivot studies draw. Its documentation covers two, one for daily pivots and one for a user-chosen period, alongside a separate Pivot Range study; on 26 October 2026 those three were everything its technical studies contents page listed with pivot in the name. The daily study takes its inputs from the intraday chart it sits on by default, and can be pointed at a daily chart instead through an input called Reference Daily Chart For Data.

The labels come from older vocabulary than any charting package. The CFTC's futures glossary defines support as "a price area where new buying is likely to come in and stem any decline", and its Resistance entry gives the mirror image, a price area where new selling emerges to dampen a continued rise. Both entries open with the words "in technical analysis", which the same glossary describes as forecasting from price change, rates of change, volume and open interest while setting fundamentals aside. It has no entry containing the word pivot at all, so the labels are defined by the regulator and the calculation behind them is not.

How is the classic pivot point formula calculated?

The standard formula averages the prior high, low and close for the pivot, then builds each level from the pivot and the prior range. Sierra Chart numbers its formulas, and this is Formula Type 0 — the default, and the one its documentation calls most common. Writing H, L and C for the prior period's high, low and close:

• Pivot (PP) = (H + L + C) ÷ 3
• R1 = 2PP − L, and S1 = 2PP − H
• R2 = PP + (H − L), and S2 = PP − (H − L)
• R3 = 2PP + (H − 2L), and S3 = 2PP − (2H − L)
• R4 = 3PP + (H − 3L), and S4 = 3PP − (3H − L)

The study also offers half-steps — R0.5, R1.5, R2.5, R3.5 and the same set below the pivot — each at the midpoint of the two levels either side.

Run it on the E-mini S&P 500, with a prior session high of 6,810.00, a low of 6,752.25 and a close of 6,790.75 — figures invented here to make the arithmetic concrete and taken from no real session. They sum to 20,353.00, so the pivot is 6,784.33. R1 comes out at 6,816.42 and S1 at 6,758.67; the prior range is 57.75 points, so R2 is 6,842.08 and S2 is 6,726.58.

Two things fall out. The raw pivot, 6,784.3333, is not a tradable price on a contract moving in 0.25 increments, which is why the study carries a Round to Tick Size input that snaps its outputs to the symbol's tick size. And R1 minus S1 is exactly 57.75, the prior range again: in this formula the first pair of levels is always one range wide, however volatile the session that produced it.

How many pivot point formulas are there?

Twenty-nine on Sierra Chart. Its pivot documentation lists formula types numbered 0 through 28, and invites users to ask support for one that is missing. Eight of the twenty-nine are given names on the page rather than only numbers — Camarilla, Tom DeMark, Frank Dilernia, Shadow Trader, Fibonacci Zone, Central Pivot Range, the ACD method and Advanced Camarilla — and they disagree about what to average and about what to measure the levels from.

What are Camarilla and Tom DeMark pivot points?

Two of the named formula types in Sierra Chart's list, each departing from the default average of the prior high, low and close in its own way. Tom DeMark pivots are the outlier, because the inputs change shape with what the market did: the intermediate value doubles the prior low when that period's close finished below its own open, doubles the high when the close finished above it, and doubles the close when the two were equal. The pivot is a quarter of that sum, and both the first support and the first resistance are half of it.

Camarilla pivots drop the pivot out of the level arithmetic entirely. Every level but the fifth sits at the prior close plus or minus a fraction of 1.1 times the prior range, and the fifth resistance is the prior close multiplied by the ratio of the prior high to the prior low. Two traders can therefore both run "pivot points" on the same contract and the same data and look at different prices; the troubleshooting documentation covers that in one line — a mismatched formula type means mismatched lines.

What period do pivot points cover, and when do they reset?

Daily pivots use the previous trading day, so each trading day gets its own set of lines. The variable-period study widens that to anything from one minute to a year, computed from the data loaded in the chart, and weekly pivots are the period type set to Weeks with a length of 1. The documentation says the same prior-period rule applies to weekly and monthly lines as to daily ones.

Those longer periods carry definitions of their own. Sierra Chart defines a week as Sunday through Saturday inclusive, and a month as the first calendar day through the last. For a daily period it is explicit that the setting is Days with a length of 1 rather than a count of minutes, and that the inputs come from the prior period, with some formulas also taking the current period's open.

Weekends and holidays are where the resets get fiddly on a futures contract. Weekend data is ignored by default, so a Monday that opens on Sunday evening takes its levels from Friday's session, while lines still appear over the weekend days themselves based on the last non-weekend period. Sunday evening data does reach Tuesday's levels, because it belongs to Monday's trading day. That matches how our trading hours treat the calendar: the trading day runs on the CME session, opens at 6:00 PM ET, and a Sunday-evening position belongs to Monday. Holidays need more care again: partial trading on a holiday usually falls in an evening session counted toward the next trading day, so the day after can end up referencing a stub. The documented fixes are to exclude the date in chart settings, or to let the variable-period study skip periods with too little data.

Why do two charts show different pivot points for the same contract?

Because "yesterday" is a setting. Sierra Chart publishes a help topic on daily pivot values differing between sources or between users, and its first two causes are the session times the chart is using and the close the calculation is fed.

Session times are the start and end of a trading day on the chart, and electronic futures trade close to 24 hours, so a chart can be set to the day session alone or to the full one. When the study reads an intraday chart, H and L are the prior trading day's extremes between the session start and end times, C is the value at the session end time, and the open is taken at the next day's session start. Narrow the session to day hours and all three change. Its worked example for a full 24-hour session on the E-mini S&P 500 sets the time zone to New York with a 16:15:00 start and a 16:14:59 end, because the evening session counts as the start of the following day.

The close is the subtler problem. A day's final trade and its official settlement are two different prices, as the help topic says plainly, and the CFTC glossary keeps them as separate entries: a settlement price is what the clearing organisation uses each day to clear trades and settle accounts between its clearing members, while a closing price is whatever printed in the part of the session the exchange officially designates as the close. Many of the formula types take the prior close as a variable, which is how the documentation puts it, so the choice matters. Sierra Chart's answer is an input that points the study at a separate historical daily chart of the same symbol, and a second one whose stated purpose is to supply the settlement price for that prior-close variable. How a futures settlement price is set is the longer version of why the two differ.

What else moves the pivot levels on your own chart?

Four more causes sit in the chart itself rather than in the formula, and each one is documented as a reason the lines come out wrong. The one that catches most people is bar type. On charts built from something other than fixed time — volume, range, renko, number of trades, delta volume, reversal, price change or point and figure — the bars have no exact start time, so the documentation says to enable a new bar at the session start, or to point the study at a daily chart instead. For the variable-period study on those bar types with a period measured in minutes, the only fix offered is a return to fixed time bars.

The Heiken Ashi study is the second, and it is easy to miss because it is not a pivot setting at all: displayed as the main price graph it changes the pivot values, and changes them again as the bar timeframe changes, because of how that study modifies the price bars underneath.

The other two are about how much data is in front of the study. Missing historical intraday data shifts the inputs, and the stated remedy is to delete and re-download it. A formula that references the prior period needs both periods loaded — the example given is a two-month period, which needs four months in the chart to be right, so one study can give two answers on two charts of the same symbol, one of them simply shorter.

When none of that explains the difference, the documented way to settle it is to read the prior high, low and close plus the current day's open off the chart, work the published formula by hand, and see which figure your platform disagrees with you about.

Do pivot levels tell you where price will turn?

Sierra Chart's documentation answers a narrower question. It specifies an input source, an averaging rule, a set of offsets, and the settings that change each of them, and where it names its own outputs it calls them support and resistance lines. The vocabulary comes from the CFTC glossary, whose Support entry puts a hedge inside the definition — buying there is likely, in the regulator's own word, not certain. A hedge in a glossary is not a measurement, and the same glossary's technical analysis entry attaches the condition that the whole approach can work consistently only if price movements are not a random walk.

So the honest description of a pivot ladder is a set of reference prices computed from yesterday and drawn today, reproducible by anyone who matches the formula, the session definition and the data behind it — and the troubleshooting topic is clear that even a chart referencing exchange daily data can still differ from another source. The lines can be projected up to ten bars past the chart's last bar, which the documentation offers so the next period's levels can be read before that period arrives. Knowing a number in advance is a different claim from knowing what price does when it reaches that number, and this post is not making the second one.

What do pivot distances mean on a funded account?

They set the size of the loss you accept when a stop goes on the far side of a level, and on an account with a published drawdown that number has to be checked before the order. In the worked example above the pivot sat 25.67 points above S1, and the E-mini S&P 500 is $50 per index point, so that distance is $1,283.33 on one contract.

On a $50K account the drawdown is $2,000 on every program we sell, with the figures for the other sizes kept on that page, so one contract stopped out across the pivot-to-S1 distance uses about 64% of the distance to the line as it sits at the start of the account. The contract limit at that size is four minis, and four contracts across the same distance is $5,133.33, more than two and a half times the drawdown. Four contracts is where orders stop being accepted, and that is the whole of what the ceiling tells you.

The micro contract scales the arithmetic down by a factor of ten: at $5 per point the same distance is $128.33 per contract, and because ten micros count as one mini, the forty-micro ceiling comes to the same $5,133.33. Levels from a wide prior range need either a smaller contract count or a stop that is not anchored to the level, and the arithmetic for that choice is in futures position sizing. These are simulated accounts with a real payout on the profits, and the drawdown line is a risk parameter inside that simulation, watched live through the session and liquidating the account on a touch.

FAQ

Are pivot points based on the settlement price or the last trade?

Either, depending on what the study is reading. Sierra Chart's documentation warns that a day's final trade is not the same thing as its official settlement, and that an intraday chart will not necessarily hold the exact daily high, low and close. For accuracy it recommends feeding the daily study a historical daily chart built on the exchange's own daily values, and it carries a further input whose documented purpose is to put the CME settlement price into the prior-close slot the formulas read.

Do weekend sessions change Monday's pivot points?

By default, no. Weekend data is ignored, so a Monday whose session begins on Sunday evening takes its levels from Friday, and lines drawn over Saturday and Sunday come from the last non-weekend period. An input can include Saturday data for the Sunday or Monday that follows. Sunday evening does feed Tuesday's levels, because that evening belongs to Monday's trading day — the same convention our own trading hours use.

Does the pivot point move during the session?

Not in the standard formula, which takes its three inputs from the period that has already finished. Some formula types also use the current period's open, so those can settle on their final value only once the new session opens. After that the documented inputs are fixed for the rest of the period. That does not guarantee two charts agree: the troubleshooting topic lists missing data, insufficient data loaded, bar type and a Heiken Ashi main price graph as reasons the same formula still produces different values.

What is the central pivot range?

A formula variant that replaces the usual first support with a midpoint. In Sierra Chart's numbering it is formula type 16, listed on the page as the Central Pivot Range formula, and it has only three outputs: the pivot is the usual average of the prior high, low and close, the first support sits at the midpoint of the high and the low, and the first resistance is that support reflected across the pivot. The page gives the formula and the name and no interpretation of either.