Marko Nikolic developed the Sigma project for 3 reasons. Firstly, he is a strong supporter of pivot-based strategies - especially when used in level trading type scenarios. Secondly, he was asked to develop and demonstrate a product suitable for "naked" trading i.e. managing market positions strictly based on price action with no indicators of any kind. And finally, many mnikolic.com community forum members have been asking for best Take Profit/Stop Loss limit settings to use with Marko Nikolic indicators - namely TradeBuilder Classic and MarketScalper PRO.

If you’re new to pivot lines, you can imagine them to be magnetic bands that attract and repel price action. Once price reaches pivots it tends to either bounce (repel), consolidate (attract), or, if momentum is great enough, pierce with great force (acceleration, gaps, etc.) - often triggering a new trend run. To summarize, pivot lines identify key supply/demand zones where participant interest intensively interacts. It is precisely for this reason that most market makers and professional traders incorporate pivots (either the floor trader type or custom like Sigma) into their daily strategy.

Sigma pivot projections (forecasts) are derived from Marko Nikolic's proprietary quantitative models, and qualified via several validation algorithms. The final call on each projection is made by Marko himself. Back and forward tests, out of sample, have shown Sigma to consistently project accurate pivot lines approximately 80% of the time. Each Sigma publication includes 7 projections in total: 1x pivot point (bias determinant), 3x support (for bearish bias), 3x resistance (for bullish bias).

All Sigma projections are issued within minutes of market open. Why not before? The answer is Open price. It is a key ingredient in determining accurate pivots for a given outlook term (daily, weekly etc.). Once Sigma projections are published, they remain valid for the duration of the session/outlook term (minimum 24 hours from the time of publication). New users should read the Sigma Pivots Interpretive Manual to learn more about Sigma forecasts and their individual elements.

There are 2 services available for Sigma Pivots - Standard (free) and Premium (paid). Both utilize the same set of models and algorithms in their calculations, with the main differences being market personalization, publication delivery medium, and frequency of projections. Standard Sigma pivots are published here, on mnikolic.com, most trading days but only for 1-2 randomly selected markets and outlook terms. Standard is best suited for those who don't have any particular market preferences, and for traders looking to test-drive Sigma's capabilities and accuracy. Premium is for traders who regularly deal with specific markets and outlooks (intraday, daily, weekly, etc.), and wish to receive projections via email on daily basis. The comparison chart below outlines key differences between the two services.

Subscription pricing quoted for Sigma Premium refers to weekly rates - regardless of projection frequency. Another words, a weekly projection and 5x daily projections are both the same price. You may be wondering how a single projection can cost as much as 5. The answer is labour and effort. Weekly projections take a lot more time and effort to calculate than daily since they consider price behavior on per session basis.