RSI, and why it is usually silent here

What it means

The Relative Strength Index compares the size of recent gains with the size of recent losses over a period, conventionally fourteen bars, and expresses the result between 0 and 100. High readings mean recent bars have been dominated by gains, low readings by losses.

The familiar 70 and 30 thresholds are a convention, not a property of markets. Their popularity is the reason RSI is quoted more often than almost any other indicator, and the reason most of those quotations carry no information.

How we detect it

The engine computes RSI over fourteen bars, and then gates it hard. It is surfaced only when the value is at or below 24 while price is near an important support zone, or at or above 80 while price is near an important resistance zone.

Both halves are required. An extreme reading in the middle of nowhere is not reported, and a reading near a zone that is not extreme is not reported either. There is a single implementation of this rule in the codebase, reused rather than restated, so RSI cannot mean one thing in a brief and another in an answer.

When the gate declines, it says WHY — the value was not extreme near a zone, or there was not enough history. That reason is used to tell a reader who asked about RSI that momentum was checked and had nothing to add, which is more honest than silence.

When the read carries information

• Price is genuinely at a zone, so the reading has a context that makes it a statement about something.
• The thresholds are treated as this product's, not as universal. 24 and 80 are deliberately further out than the popular 30 and 70.
• The timeframe is one where fourteen bars is a meaningful stretch of market.

When it misleads

• In a strong trend RSI can sit at an extreme for a long time. An extreme reading is a description of recent bars, and it is not a statement that they are about to reverse.
• After a gap or a single outsized bar, the average of gains and losses is distorted for the whole period that follows.
• The gate can be right and still frustrating: a reader looking at an obviously extreme RSI will be told it was not surfaced, because price was nowhere near a zone.

How it reaches you

In our analysis order, RSI comes after zones, proximity and structure. It is a secondary read by design, and this is the rule the whole engine is arranged around.

RSI never guarantees anything on our surfaces, and an extreme reading is never presented as a reason to do anything.