Quarterly

A quarterly, in trading chat and on charts, is a pivot level calculated from the price action of the previous calendar quarter (a three-month block: Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, Jul-Sep, or Oct-Dec). It is one of a family of "pivot points" — reference prices derived from a prior period's high, low, and close — that traders plot on their charts to mark levels where price might pause, reverse, or accelerate.

The calculation itself is mechanical: take the high, low, and close of the completed quarter, run them through a standard pivot-point formula, and it spits out a central pivot plus a series of support and resistance levels above and below it. Because the underlying formula is the same one used for daily, weekly, and monthly pivots, a "quarterly" is really just that same math applied to a much longer lookback window, which makes the resulting levels more significant but also much further from current price.

The nuance that trips people up is that a quarterly pivot is a fixed level for the entire current quarter — it does not move day to day the way a moving average would. It was set once, using only data from the quarter that just ended, and it stays put until the next quarter begins. Traders sometimes confuse it with a "quarterly high" or "quarterly low" (the literal highest and lowest traded price of the quarter), which is a related but different concept — a pivot is a calculated level, not an observed extreme.

Because quarterlies span such a long period, they tend to sit far away from the current price for much of the quarter, and price only interacts with them when a strong multi-week move carries it there. When that happens, traders watch for the level to act as a magnet, a wall, or a launching pad, depending on how price behaves around it.