The trend line you followed looked perfect. Three moving averages spreading apart, price riding above them, the setup every guide draws. So you bought the pullback, and the lines you trusted immediately curled back together and went flat while price chopped sideways for two days. The indicator did not fail. It was telling you the trend had already stopped, and you read the picture from the moment it looked best rather than the moment it was true.
The Alligator is built to keep you out of exactly that chop. By the end of this guide you will be able to tell at a glance whether the market is trending or resting, read the three lines the way they were designed to be read, and understand why the forward shift that looks like prediction is nothing of the sort.
Key Findings
- Three lines, one question: the jaw, teeth and lips are smoothed moving averages of different lengths, and their relationship tells you whether the market is trending or ranging.
- Sleeping vs awake: braided, flat lines mean the alligator is asleep and the market is ranging; lines fanning out in order mean it is awake and a trend is feeding.
- Displacement is not prediction: each line is shifted a few bars forward, which looks like it forecasts price but is only a fixed offset, not a redraw of history.
- The history holds, the live bar moves: closed values lock, but the current bar's averages keep updating until the candle closes, so a fresh separation is provisional until then.
What is the Alligator indicator actually measuring?
The Alligator measures whether price is trending or resting by comparing three moving averages of different speeds. It is not a momentum tool and not a signal-arrow tool. It is a state read: trend or no trend.
The three lines each have a name and a job. The jaw is the slowest, a 13-period smoothed average shifted 8 bars forward. The teeth sit in the middle, an 8-period average shifted 5 bars. The lips are the fastest, a 5-period average shifted 3 bars. All three are calculated on the median price of each candle, the midpoint between its high and low, rather than the close, so they track where a candle actually traded instead of where it happened to finish.
Bill Williams introduced it in his 1995 book Trading Chaos, and the animal metaphor is the whole point. An alligator sleeps through quiet water and wakes to hunt when prey moves. Williams wanted a picture that made a trader wait through the boring, range-bound stretches, which is where most accounts bleed out, and only engage when the market started to run.
How do you read the Alligator: sleeping versus awake?
Everything comes down to what the three lines are doing relative to each other.
When the jaw, teeth and lips are tangled together and running flat, the alligator is sleeping. The averages agree because price is going nowhere, so there is no trend to trade. This is the state to sit out. The longer it sleeps, the hungrier it gets, which is the old trader’s way of saying a long range often precedes a strong move.
When the three lines separate and fan out in clean order, the alligator is awake and feeding. In an uptrend the lips lead on top, the teeth follow, the jaw trails below, all spreading apart. A downtrend is the mirror image. The wider the mouth opens, the more force behind the move. When the lines start closing back together, the alligator is getting full, and the trend is losing its appetite.
Why does the Alligator plot into the future, and is that repainting?
This is where new users get uneasy, and it deserves a straight answer. Each of the three lines is shifted forward on the chart, the jaw by 8 bars, the teeth by 5, the lips by 3. So the lines float ahead of the current candle, as if the indicator is drawing where price will go. It is not.
The forward shift is a fixed offset, decided in advance and never changed. The value plotted 8 bars ahead of today is simply today’s jaw reading, moved to the right so it lines up with future price action for comparison. Displacement is not repainting. Repainting is when a signal on a past bar redraws after the fact, so a backtest looks better than live trading ever was. A displaced average never touches its own history; it only changes where the current reading is drawn.
The one honest caveat is the live candle. Because the lines are moving averages, the still-forming bar keeps updating until it closes, so a line separation that looks clean mid-candle can tighten back up by the close. That is not a flaw, it is the same live-bar reality every average shares. We laid out the full test for telling real non-repaint behavior from the fake kind in the non-repaint forex indicator guide , and it applies here without change: judge the picture at the close.
RelicusRoad Pro
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Get RelicusRoad ProAlligator vs a single moving average vs the Awesome Oscillator
Traders reasonably ask why they would run three shifted averages instead of one plain one, or instead of another Bill Williams tool. Here is the honest split.
| Factor | Alligator | Single moving average | Awesome Oscillator |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it shows | Trend vs range state | Price above or below its average | Momentum building or fading |
| Lines | Three, shifted forward | One | Histogram, no lines |
| Best at | Spotting when to sit out | Simple trend bias | Timing momentum shifts |
| Blind spot | Late to call the very first turn | Cannot show consolidation clearly | Whips around in a range |
| Reads on live bar | Provisional until close | Provisional until close | Provisional until close |
A single average answers a smaller question and answers it fine. The Alligator’s edge is the range read: three braided lines show consolidation in a way one line simply cannot. Its cost is lag, because smoothed, shifted averages are deliberately slow, so it will never call the exact bottom or top. That is by design. Pair it with a momentum read like the Awesome Oscillator for timing, or study the plain version of this trade-off in our moving average crossover strategy and the note on leading versus lagging indicators .
How does RelicusRoad Pro use a confirmed trend state?
RelicusRoad Pro treats trend state the way a patient alligator reader does, without the discipline gap. Rather than leaving you to eyeball whether three lines have truly fanned out or are about to braid back together mid-candle, it commits each trend read at the candle’s close and holds it, on the non-repaint side of the line above. The same logic runs across MT4, MT5 and TradingView, so a trend read you trust on one platform is the read you get on the next.
None of that is sold as automatic trading, and the honesty matters. Knowing the market is trending tells you when the odds favor holding a move and when to stand aside in the chop. It cannot tell you the idea was sound to begin with, and it will not repair loose risk. That part stays with you. What a confirmed trend state removes is the oldest trap in reading the Alligator: acting on a mouth that looks open three seconds into a candle that closes flat.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Alligator indicator? The Alligator is a trend indicator made of three smoothed moving averages plotted on the median price of each candle. The slow line is the jaw, a 13-period average shifted 8 bars forward; the middle line is the teeth, an 8-period average shifted 5 bars forward; the fast line is the lips, a 5-period average shifted 3 bars forward. It was introduced by the trader and author Bill Williams in his 1995 book Trading Chaos. The three lines are meant to imitate a hunting alligator that sleeps through range-bound markets and wakes to feed when a trend develops.
How do you read the Alligator indicator? Read it in two states. When the jaw, teeth and lips are tangled together and running roughly flat, the alligator is sleeping and the market is ranging, so trend trades are low-odds. When the three lines pull apart and fan out in clean order, with the lips on top for an uptrend or on the bottom for a downtrend, the alligator is awake and eating, which signals a trend worth trading with. The wider the mouth opens, the stronger the move; when the lines start to converge again, the trend is losing force.
Does the Alligator indicator repaint? The Alligator does not repaint its closed history. Each line is a moving average, and once a candle closes its value is locked, so past readings do not move. What confuses people is the forward shift: the lines are displaced several bars ahead of the current candle, so they appear to float into the future. That is a fixed offset, not a redraw. The one honest catch is the live bar, where the smoothed averages keep updating until the candle closes, so a fresh line separation you see mid-candle is not settled yet.
What is the difference between the Alligator and a moving average? A single moving average gives you one line and one job: is price above or below its recent average. The Alligator runs three averages of different lengths and shifts each one forward by a different amount, so instead of one line you read the relationship between three. That relationship is what tells you trend versus range at a glance. A single average cannot show you consolidation the way three braided lines can, and it cannot show a trend fanning out in staged order.
What are the best settings for the Alligator indicator? The standard settings Bill Williams published are a 13-period jaw shifted 8 bars, an 8-period teeth shifted 5 bars, and a 5-period lips shifted 3 bars, all using smoothed moving averages on median price. Most traders leave these alone because the ratios are what create the sleeping-and-waking behavior. Shortening the periods makes the alligator wake faster and gives more false starts in a range; lengthening them makes it slower and steadier. Change one thing at a time and test it on your own market before trusting it live.
The Alligator will not call the turn for you. It tells you when the market is trending and worth engaging and when it is resting and best left alone, provided you read the three lines once the candle has closed.
See how RelicusRoad Pro reads a confirmed trend across MT4, MT5, and TradingView →