LEARN THE DESK / ALERTS
Price alerts: thresholds, distance and what a notification can promise
Calculate the distance to an alert price and understand why alerts are notifications, not guaranteed executions.
A reminder to look, not an order to trade
A price alert watches for a chosen condition and notifies you when it is observed. It is different from a stop order at a broker. Browser alerts depend on the desk running, data arriving and browser permissions or background behavior. A fast market can move beyond the threshold before you see the notification.
Try it with your own numbers
Local calculation only. These inputs are illustrative, not live quotes. Nothing you enter is uploaded.
Worked example
From $100 to an alert at $105 is $5, or 5%. Setting that alert does not forecast that price will reach $105.
The calculation
Distance = target − current price. Percentage distance = 100 × distance / current price.Method and references
Arithmetic is shown above so you can reproduce the result. Indicator background: J. Welles Wilder, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems (1978); John Bollinger, Bollinger on Bollinger Bands (2001). These references explain methods, not a claim that TickSPY predicts prices.
Exercises use the values you enter, not a hidden market feed. Examples demonstrate mechanics; they are not evidence of profitability. Reviewed October 11, 2026.
What this cannot tell you
The desk does not place trades. Its alerts are made by the page itself — a system notification, a sound and a badge — so they stop when the page closes and need its permission to notify. A background tab is throttled by the browser, so an alert can be late rather than early. Free-mode alerts follow the loaded replay/sample, not live market quotes.