Reversal, shoulder and waist mean different things
A reversal starts a new column. The horizontal turn from up to down is a shoulder; the turn from down to up is a waist. Line width tracks breaks of those levels, rather than the direction of every move. The construction rules are documented by StockCharts ChartSchool.
A 4-point example you can reproduce
Select Fixed Amount, enter 4, and paste the CSV below. Prices are invented for arithmetic, not a historical performance example. The first nonzero move starts the chart; this tool seeds its first shoulder and waist boundary from the initial close.
Date,Close
1,100
2,110
3,107
4,106
5,99
6,103
7,110
8,112
9,108
10,98| Price move | Direction rule | Width rule |
|---|---|---|
| 100 → 110 | First rising leg | Thick Yang; 100 is the starting boundary. |
| 110 → 107 | Fall of 3, below the 4-point threshold | No new column; the plotted extreme stays at 110. |
| 110 → 106 | Fall of exactly 4 | Reverse down; shoulder = 110. The line stays thick. |
| 106 → 99 | Extend the falling leg | Cross 100: thick to 100, then thin below 100. |
| 99 → 103 | Rise of exactly 4 | Reverse up; waist = 99. The line stays thin. |
| 103 → 110 | Reach the previous shoulder | Still thin: touching 110 is not a break above it. |
| 110 → 112 | Break above the shoulder | Thin to 110, then thick from 110 to 112. |
| 112 → 108 → 98 | Reverse down at 108, then extend | Shoulder = 112. Thick to waist 99, then thin to 98. |
The result has four columns, indexed 0 through 3. Width changes split a column at 100, 110 and 99; they do not create extra columns. A thick segment descending from 112 to 99 is therefore a valid result.
Fixed amount and percentage use different units
Fixed Amount is measured in price units. At an extreme of 200, a value of 4 reverses a rising leg at 196 or lower. Percentage (%) in this tool is recalculated from the current plotted extreme: at 200, 4% means 8 units and a downward reversal at 192. From a falling extreme of 192, an upward reversal needs 192 × 1.04 = 199.68.
This local percentage mode differs from TradingView Percentage (LTP). TradingView documents a threshold derived from the latest close, rounded to the symbol tick size and applied across the chart. It can rebuild history as that value changes. TradingView also offers ATR; this tool does not calculate ATR or round to an exchange tick size. See TradingView Kagi chart settings.
Use closing prices in chronological order
- Paste comma- or tab-separated data with a Close or Price header. A Date or Time column supplies labels; otherwise rows receive point labels.
- Order rows from oldest to newest. This tool preserves row order and reads only the closing-price field, even if the file contains OHLC columns.
- Use positive finite prices and a positive reversal value. Select Generate Kagi Chart; settings changes then redraw the loaded data.
- Compare the result with the worked example before analyzing your own data. A different starting row can change the initial state.
What the chart leaves out
Equal column spacing does not mean equal elapsed time. Keep the source timestamps to measure holding periods. Daily closing rows also omit the order of intraday highs and lows: a move through a threshold and back before the close will be absent from this close-only chart.
An unfinished source bar can change the current Kagi projection. TradingView builds Kagi data from lower-timeframe OHLC, so it is an approximation of a tick-based path. Its Pine API exposes Kagi data through ticker.kagi and request.security; that data alone does not recreate the visual chart. See the non-standard chart data documentation.
Renko builds bricks and Point & Figure builds X/O boxes. Kagi extends vertical lines and uses width changes, so their settings and signals are not interchangeable. Threshold changes can remove or add reversals; no threshold proves that a trading rule will be profitable.
Educational chart construction only, not investment advice. Evaluate any rule on ordinary market prices with trading costs and execution assumptions; synthetic chart values are not guaranteed fill prices. Sources checked October 17, 2026.