How to evaluate an indicator before you trust it

Indicators are transformations of price. They can organise information, but they can't create an edge on their own.

1. Does it repaint?

An indicator repaints if its historical values differ from what it displayed in real time. Common causes are future-looking pivots and higher-timeframe data requested with lookahead. Ask the author, and test by watching it live on a fast timeframe.

2. What is the lag?

Everything based on confirmed swings or averages is late. That is fine — but you should know by how many bars.

3. How sensitive is it to settings?

If a small change in length completely changes the signals, the historical "performance" you see on the chart is likely fitted to that one setting.

4. What does it actually measure?

Many indicators measure the same thing — recent price change — in different ways. Stacking several of them adds confirmation in appearance only.

5. Does it improve your results?

The only test that matters is whether trades taken with the indicator perform better than trades without it, measured over a meaningful sample. Tag the trades in your journal and compare them in analytics.

Wickxos publishes documentation, settings and known limitations for each indicator in the library so you can answer these questions before relying on any of them.