RSI, MACD and other technical alerts: a hands-on guide

A price alert asks "has BTC reached 70,000?". A technical alert asks a different question: "has RSI on the 1-hour chart crossed back above 30?" or "has MACD crossed its signal line on the 4-hour?". Instead of the price, it watches an indicator value. In AlertaChart technical alerts are part of the Pro (400 alerts) and Elite (1,000) plans; how price alerts work is explained in the crypto price alerts guide.

Which indicators you can watch

The source menu of the alert window offers seven indicators. Each has its own settings, independent of any indicator you have on the chart, and some let you pick which line to watch.

A short reading of each, so the levels mean something. RSI compares average gains with average losses and runs from 0 to 100. MACD is the 12-period exponential average minus the 26-period one, and its signal line is a 9-period average of MACD; MACD − Signal is the gap between the two, so it crosses zero exactly when MACD crosses its signal. The Stochastic shows where the close sits in the recent high-low range; Stoch RSI applies the same formula to RSI values, which makes it reach extremes more often. CCI measures how far the typical price is from its average and has no upper or lower limit. Williams %R is an inverted stochastic between 0 and −100. ATR averages the true range, gaps included, and says nothing about direction.

How the alert is evaluated: closed bars only

Next to the current value the window shows (closed bar), and that is the rule: a technical alert ignores the candle that is still forming and looks only at bars that have closed. The value is computed with the same indicator code the chart draws with, so it matches what you see on the last finished bar.

• No intrabar fires. If RSI dips below 30 in the middle of an hour and recovers before the close, a 1-hour alert does not fire.
• A built-in delay of up to one bar. A 4-hour alert can only fire when a 4-hour candle closes, so it may report a move up to 4 hours after it began.
• Timeframes: 1 and 5 minutes, 15 and 30 minutes, 1, 2, 4 and 12 hours, 1 day and 1 week. Same as chart picks the nearest one when you save and then keeps it, so changing the chart later does not change the alert. A 10 or 30-second chart is checked on 1-minute bars.
• Conditions: Crossing, Crossing Up, Crossing Down, Greater Than and Less Than. Channel and moving conditions are for price alerts only.
• Every Time repeats per bar. An alert set to Every Time is checked once per closed bar of its timeframe, so it can repeat at most once per closed bar: hourly on a 1-hour alert, daily on a 1-day one.

Set a technical alert, step by step

1. Open the chart of the market, for example BTC/USDT. You do not need the indicator on the chart; the alert computes its own.
2. Open the Create Alert window with the Alert button in the toolbar above the chart, with Alt+A, or with + in the Alerts panel. On the phone: ⋯ (Analysis centre), then Alerts, then +. Right-click Set price alert and the 🔔 will not do here: they save a price alert at once, without the window.
3. Under Condition, click the source menu that shows Price and pick the indicator. Below Pro it carries a PRO badge and opens the upgrade screen.
4. Adjust the settings boxes, pick the line where there is a choice (for MACD the window starts on MACD − Signal) and choose the timeframe or Same as chart.
5. Choose the condition and type the level, for example Crossing Up and 30 for RSI.
6. Set Trigger, Expiration, Message and Notifications as for a price alert, then press Create.

Example rules

• RSI(14), 1 hour, Crossing Up 30: RSI has climbed back out of the oversold zone.
• MACD(12, 26, 9), 4 hours, line MACD − Signal, Crossing Up 0: MACD has crossed above its signal line.
• Williams %R(14), 1 day, Crossing Down −20: the reading has left the overbought zone.
• ATR(14), 1 day, Greater Than a value you choose: daily ranges have widened beyond what you consider normal.

These are examples of how to phrase a rule, not trading recommendations.

Webhooks: send the alert to your own tools

On Pro and Elite, Notifications has a Webhook row: switch it on, enter an address that starts with http or https, and AlertaChart sends a POST request to it when the alert fires. Use the Message placeholders {{ticker}}, {{price}}, {{interval}} and {{time}} so the receiving tool knows what happened. Test with a harmless endpoint first. A webhook only delivers a message; AlertaChart does not place orders.

Watchlist alerts and script alerts

• Watchlist alerts apply one indicator rule to every visible symbol of a list, up to 100 symbols. Click the name of the list at the top of the watchlist and choose Alarm on the whole list in its menu. A price level cannot be used here, because it means something different for every coin; two extra sources, Bar change % and % since set, exist for this case. Pro includes 2, Elite 15.
• Script alerts watch an AlertaScript script: one of its plots, or the alerts the script raises itself. Pick Script in the source menu; it appears once you have saved scripts. They are Pro and Elite, and the window warns that they run only while the app is open. The AlertaScript alerts guide shows how to write a script that raises alerts.

When technical alerts can fire with the app closed

Technical alerts use the same coverage rule as price alerts: on supported Binance crypto markets they are watched on AlertaChart's servers, elsewhere only while the app is open, and on crypto charts the note at the bottom of the window says which case applies. The full table is in the crypto price alerts guide.

Common mistakes

• Expecting intrabar alerts. Closed bars only; choose a shorter timeframe if the delay matters.
• Levels outside the range. RSI 120 or a positive Williams %R is refused, because it could never be reached.
• Greater Than with Every Time. While RSI stays above 70, the alert repeats once per closed bar of its timeframe, every hour on a 1-hour alert, not every minute as a price alert would.
• Assuming the chart indicator and the alert are linked. Changing the RSI period on the chart does not change an alert you already saved.
• Treating overbought as "sell". In strong trends RSI can stay overbought for a long time, as Fidelity's RSI guide notes.

Method and limitations

The indicator list, settings, valid levels and timeframes in this guide were read from AlertaChart's alert code on 5 October 2026; the indicator definitions and reference levels come from the Fidelity Learning Center pages listed in the sources.

• Indicator values depend on the exchange's data and on how much history is loaded, so they can differ slightly from another platform, especially right after a long gap.
• Closed-bar evaluation trades speed for stability: fewer false starts, but up to one bar of delay.
• Reference levels such as 70 and 30 are conventions. They describe recent bars and do not predict the next one.
• Script alerts and alerts on markets outside the server's coverage need the app to be open.

Related guides and help

• Crypto price alerts: set-up and limits
• Bar Replay: practise on past charts
• Indicators in AlertaChart
• Alerts in the Help Center
• Plans and prices

Open the AlertaChart charts and create a technical alert →Pro