Not advice Educational reference only — nothing here predicts a price. What the measured outcomes are · Sources

Reference appendix

Momentum & oscillators

Indicators measuring the speed and strength of price moves, usually scaled to a fixed range, to flag overbought, oversold, and shifting momentum.

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How these fit together

These all compress recent price action into a bounded number, which is what makes them comparable across securities and easy to read at a glance — and what makes them fail in the same way. In a strong trend every one of them pins at an extreme and stays there, which is why an overbought reading is not a sell signal and why a trend filter is not optional. They also form a clear sensitivity ladder, and stacking two indicators from the same rung mostly produces the same signal twice. The more durable reading across the whole family is divergence: price making a new extreme that the oscillator does not confirm, meaning the latest push had less force behind it than the last one.

  • Sensitivity ladder: StochRSI → stochastic → RSI → MACD → TRIX, fastest to slowest
  • MACD's zero-line cross is a 12/26 EMA crossover — the same event as on the moving-averages page
  • RSI and MFI differ only by volume weighting — when they disagree, volume is not confirming
  • Pair one oscillator with one trend tool, not two oscillators, which mostly repeat each other
  • Oscillator + ADX below 20 → the environment 70/30 signals are designed for
  • Divergence is the reading most traders trust above the extremes themselves
  • In strong trends use 80/20 instead of 70/30 to cut the false calls

Relative strength index

RSIstudied

A 0–100 momentum oscillator comparing the size of recent gains to recent losses. Readings above 70 are typically read as overbought, below 30 as oversold.

Typical setting: 14Open →

Fast stochastic oscillator

Fast Stochstudied

Compares the current close to the high-low range over a lookback period, on a 0–100 scale, using the raw, most sensitive version of the calculation.

Typical setting: %K 14, %D 3Open →

Slow stochastic oscillator

Slow Stochstudied

The same close-vs-range comparison as the fast stochastic, with extra smoothing applied to reduce whipsaws.

Typical setting: 14, 3, 3Open →

Stochastic RSI

StochRSIuntested

Applies the stochastic oscillator's formula to RSI values instead of raw price, making an already-sensitive indicator even more reactive to short-term momentum shifts.

Typical setting: 14, 14, 3, 3Open →

Moving average convergence/divergence

MACDstudied

The difference between a fast and a slow EMA, plotted against a signal line (usually a 9-period EMA of that difference). Crossovers are read as shifts in momentum.

Typical setting: 12, 26, 9Open →

Commodity channel index

CCIstudied

Measures how far price has moved from its statistical average, used to identify cyclical turns and overbought/oversold extremes across virtually any asset.

Typical setting: 20 (or 14)Open →

Momentum

MOMstudied

The simplest momentum reading — just the difference between the current price and the price n periods ago — showing whether price is accelerating up or down.

Typical setting: 10 or 14Open →

Rate of change

ROCstudied

Momentum expressed as a percentage change over the chosen lookback period, rather than a raw price difference.

Typical setting: 9, 12, 14 or 25Open →

Smoothed rate of change

SROCuntested

Rate of Change calculated on a smoothed (EMA) price series instead of raw price, filtering out some of ROC's noise.

Typical setting: 13 EMA, 21 ROCOpen →

Williams percent range

Williams %Rstudied

A momentum oscillator similar to the Stochastic Oscillator but scaled −100 to 0, measuring the close relative to the recent high-low range. Near 0 signals overbought, near −100 oversold.

Typical setting: 14Open →

Ultimate oscillator

UOuntested

Combines short-, medium-, and long-term price momentum into one weighted reading, designed to reduce the false divergence signals that single-timeframe oscillators can give.

Typical setting: 7, 14, 28Open →

Awesome oscillator

AOuntested

The difference between a 5-period and 34-period SMA of the midpoint price ((high+low)/2), used to gauge momentum shifts independent of the closing price.

Typical setting: 5, 34Open →

Acceleration/deceleration

ACuntested

The difference between the Awesome Oscillator and its own moving average — aiming to show momentum changes even before they show up in AO or in price.

Typical setting: 5, 34, signal 5Open →

Chande momentum oscillator

CMOuntested

A −100 to 100 momentum reading based on the sum of recent gains versus losses — conceptually close to RSI, but calculated without RSI's internal smoothing, so more sensitive.

Typical setting: 9, 14 or 20Open →

True strength index

TSIuntested

A momentum oscillator built from two layers of EMA smoothing applied to price changes, aiming to filter noise while still reacting reasonably quickly.

Typical setting: 25, 13, signal 7Open →

Relative vigor index

RVIuntested

Compares the close-to-open change against the high-to-low range, on the idea that strong uptrends tend to close well above where they opened (and vice versa). Plotted against a signal line for crossovers.

Typical setting: 10, signal 4Open →

Relative vigor index simple moving average

RVIMAuntested

A simple moving average of the Relative Vigor Index, typically used as that indicator's own signal line.

Typical setting: 4Open →

Inertia

Inertiauntested

A smoothed version of the Relative Volatility Index, fitted with a linear regression, meant to show whether a trend has enough underlying “inertia” to keep going.

Typical setting: RVI 14, regression 20Open →

Dynamic momentum index

DYMIuntested

A variation of RSI whose lookback period automatically shortens or lengthens based on recent volatility, instead of using a fixed period.

Typical setting: base 14, range 5–30Open →

Intraday momentum index

IMIuntested

Applies RSI-style logic to a security's open and close prices within each session, blending candlestick analysis with momentum.

Typical setting: 14Open →

Kairi relative index

KRIuntested

The percentage difference between the current price and its moving average, used to spot how far price has stretched away from its trend.

Typical setting: 10 (sometimes 20)Open →

Forecast oscillator

FOSCuntested

The percentage difference between the actual closing price and the value the Time Series Forecast predicted — showing how far off the linear-regression forecast has been.

Typical setting: 14Open →

High-low oscillator

HLOuntested

Plots the difference between a period's high and low (or, in market-breadth contexts, the count of stocks making new highs vs. new lows) to gauge the strength of a move.

Typical setting: period variesOpen →

WaveTrend

WaveTrenduntested

A momentum oscillator built from a smoothed price-channel calculation, designed to flag overbought/oversold zones and momentum shifts earlier than RSI or Stochastics.

Typical setting: channel 10, average 21Open →

WaveTrend with crosses

WaveTrend+Xuntested

The WaveTrend oscillator with its internal line crossovers explicitly marked, highlighting buy/sell signal points directly on the chart.

Typical setting: 10, 21, signal 4Open →

How to read the evidence tag

Every entry here carries one of three tags. The tag rates the evidence behind the claim the entry makes — not how popular the tool is, how old it is, or how confident the people teaching it sound. Close to half of the entries on this site sit on the weakest tier — including every one of the eighteen Smart Money Concepts, which are drawn here in the same ink as Wilder’s ADX and deserve to be told apart from it. That is the honest position rather than an oversight.

  • defined33 entries

    True by arithmetic. This entry describes a calculation or a piece of terminology, and makes no claim about what price will do next. Nothing here can be wrong except a typo.

  • studied56 entries

    The predictive claim attached to this entry has been tested in peer-reviewed research. Being on this tier does not mean it works — across the literature these edges are typically small, unstable between markets and periods, and often gone after costs.

  • untested87 entries

    Widely taught and widely believed, but no published test of the claim was located while building this page. Treat it as a description of what traders do, not as evidence that doing it pays.

The line between studied and untested is drawn by whether a peer-reviewed test of the specific claim could be found, and those tests are listed on the Sources page under “Evidence and base rates”. If you know of a published test of something tagged untested, the tag is wrong and should change — that is the point of labelling it at all.