Levels & geometryAndrews' Pitchfork · Pitchfork
Three parallel lines drawn from three pivots, framing a trend's channel around a central median line.
Works best in trending marketsEngine-computed on a fixed sample series
What it is
Andrews' Pitchfork, devised by Dr. Alan Andrews, is a channel-drawing tool built from three parallel lines that fan out from three chosen pivot points, resembling a pitchfork laid across the chart. Its purpose is to frame a trend's likely path: a central median line represents the trend's equilibrium, and two outer lines (the tines) act as the boundaries within which price tends to oscillate. The question it answers is where price is likely to travel and where it is likely to find support or resistance as a trend unfolds. Andrews' central observation was that price gravitates back toward the median line again and again, so the tool gives a trader a moving target and a set of adaptive channel edges rather than static horizontal levels.
How it's calculated
You select three consecutive significant pivots — typically a low, a high and a higher low in an uptrend, or the mirror in a downtrend. The median line is drawn starting at the first pivot and passing through the exact midpoint between the second and third pivots, so it bisects the later swing. The two tines are then drawn parallel to the median line, one anchored at the second pivot and one at the third, so they run at the same slope on either side of the median. The spacing of the tines is set by the distance between pivots two and three, and all three lines extend forward in time to project the channel. There are no numeric parameters — the geometry is defined entirely by which three pivots you pick.
Reading it, step by step
The median line is the equilibrium of the channel, and Andrews held that price should return to it roughly as often as it departs, so it acts as a magnet that pullbacks aim for. The upper tine acts as resistance and the lower tine as support, framing the expected range of the swing around the median. When price reaches toward the median line and reverses there, the trend's balance is intact; when it repeatedly fails to reach the median, the trend is weakening on that side. A decisive break of an outer tine signals that the channel no longer contains price and the trend's structure is shifting. Reading the pitchfork is thus a matter of watching price rotate between the tines and gravitate to the median, and flagging the failures and breaks that betray a change.
Best timeframes and settings
The pitchfork has no period setting; its only inputs are the three pivots and the timeframe on which you identify them, so it scales to any chart from intraday to weekly. It works best where price moves in clean, well-defined swings, which tends to favor liquid instruments and higher timeframes where pivots are unambiguous. The tool's responsiveness depends on which pivots you anchor to: choosing recent, minor pivots produces a tight, short-lived fork, while anchoring to major swing points produces a broad channel that frames the larger trend. There is no noise-versus-smoothness dial to turn; instead the skill lies in selecting pivots that define the swing you actually intend to trade. Many traders draw a fork from major pivots for context and a second from minor ones for timing.
When and where to use it
Andrews' Pitchfork is a trending-market tool; it needs a directional swing structure with identifiable pivots to be meaningful, and it falls apart in a formless chop where no clean pivots exist. It suits liquid markets that trend in orderly channels — major forex pairs, index futures and large-cap stocks — on timeframes where swings are clear. Use it to project support and resistance and pullback targets while a trend is developing, and to define exit or reversal levels when a tine breaks. Avoid forcing it onto a rangebound market or onto ambiguous pivots, since the whole construction rests on the quality of the three points you choose. It is a framing and target tool, not a trigger, and works best alongside a confirmation method.
Strategies that use it
The median-line reversion strategy trades pullbacks in the trend direction toward the median line, entering as price approaches or bounces from it and targeting the opposite tine. The tine-bounce strategy buys the lower tine in an uptrend (or sells the upper tine in a downtrend) when price reaches the outer boundary and shows a reversal candle, placing the stop just beyond the tine. A break strategy treats a decisive close through the outer tine, or a persistent failure to reach the median, as a signal that the channel is broken and either exits the position or reverses in the new direction. In each case the parallel lines supply the entries, targets and stops, and the median line supplies the trend's center of gravity.
Combining it with other indicators
Because the pitchfork is a geometric level tool, it pairs well with independent confirmation rather than with other overlays that would clutter the chart. A momentum oscillator such as RSI or the stochastic helps confirm reversals at the tines — a bounce off the lower tine with an oversold, turning-up oscillator is more trustworthy than the touch alone. Standard horizontal support-and-resistance and Fibonacci retracement levels that coincide with a tine or the median create confluence that strengthens the level. Volume can validate a tine break, since a break on heavy volume is more likely to be real. Trendlines drawn independently often echo the pitchfork's tines, and agreement between the two methods increases confidence in the channel.
Where it fails
The pitchfork's greatest vulnerability is subjectivity: everything depends on which three pivots you select, and reasonable traders choose different pivots and so draw different forks, none provably correct. The median-line tendency is a statistical bias, not a law — trends routinely break out of the fork entirely, so the tines demand real stops rather than blind faith that price will respect them. In choppy or pivot-poor markets there are no clean points to anchor to, and a fork drawn on weak pivots is meaningless. Extending a fork far into the future compounds small errors in the original pivots into large displacement of the projected lines. The defenses are to anchor only to clear, significant pivots, to treat the lines as zones rather than exact prices, and always to confirm with structure or momentum before trading a touch.
A worked example
Suppose a stock bottoms at $30 (pivot one), rallies to $38 (pivot two), and pulls back to a higher low at $34 (pivot three), a clean up-swing structure. A trader draws the pitchfork: the median line starts at $30 and runs through the midpoint of the $38-to-$34 swing, with the upper tine anchored at $38 and the lower tine at $34, all sloping up. As the trend continues, price pulls back and finds support near the rising lower tine at around $36, where the trader goes long with a stop just under the tine, targeting the median line above. Price rallies into the median line near $42 and pauses, exactly as the tool predicts equilibrium. The trader takes partial profit at the median, and when price later returns and holds the lower tine again, adds on the same logic — the fork having framed the swing's support, target and rhythm.