what is the ichimoku cloud 
the ichimoku cloud is a collection of technical indicators that show support and resistance levels as well as momentum and trend direction it does this by taking multiple averages and plotting them on a chart it also uses these figures to compute a cloud that attempts to forecast where the price may find support or resistance in the future the ichimoku cloud was developed by goichi hosoda a japanese journalist and published in the late 1960s it provides more data points than the standard candlestick chart while it seems complicated at first glance those familiar with how to read the charts often find it easy to understand with well defined trading signals the formulas for the ichimoku cloudthe following are the five formulas for the lines that comprise the ichimoku cloud indicator conversion line tenkan sen 9 ph 9 pl 2 base line kijun sen 26 ph 26 pl 2 leading span a senkou span a cl base line 2 leading span b senkou span b 52 ph 52 pl 2 lagging span chikou span close plotted 26 periods lagging span chikou span in the past where ph period high pl period low cl conversion line begin aligned text conversion line tenkan sen frac text 9 ph text 9 pl 2 text base line kijun sen frac text 26 ph 26 pl 2 text leading span a senkou span a frac text cl base line 2 text leading span b senkou span b frac text 52 ph 52 pl 2 text lagging span chikou span text close plotted 26 periods phantom text lagging span chikou span text in the past textbf where text ph text period high text pl text period low text cl text conversion line end aligned conversion line tenkan sen 29 ph 9 pl base line kijun sen 226 ph 26 pl leading span a senkou span a 2cl base line leading span b senkou span b 252 ph 52 pl lagging span chikou span close plotted 26 periodslagging span chikou span in the pastwhere ph period highpl period lowcl conversion line 