What each measure in the catalogue actually says

Trend · 16

ADX / Directional Movement

ADX measures how ORDERLY a move is, not which way. The DI pair supplies direction: the larger of +DI/−DI is the side currently in control.

Aroon

Measures how recently the highest high and lowest low occurred. A cross says which of the two is fresher.

Donchian Channel Breakout

The highest high and lowest low of a fixed lookback. A breakout is a new extreme of that window and nothing more.

EWMAC (Exponential MA Crossover)

A volatility-normalised fast-versus-slow average spread. It is the plainest systematic trend measurement in the set.

Heikin-Ashi Trend

Candles built from averaged opens and closes, which suppresses single-bar noise and makes runs of one colour easier to read.

Hull Moving Average

A weighted average built to cut lag. Its turn is earlier than a simple average's and correspondingly noisier.

Ichimoku Cloud

The cloud is a forward-projected band of prior equilibrium. Price beneath it means the last two months of accepted value sit overhead as supply.

KAMA (Adaptive MA)

A moving average that speeds up in trends and slows in chop, using an efficiency ratio of directional travel to total travel.

Moving-Average Structure

Where price sits relative to its own long averages, and how those averages are stacked against each other. This is the plainest available description of trend direction.

Parabolic SAR

A trailing dot that accelerates toward price. It marks where the current trend reading would flip, and nothing else.

Price Structure (HH/HL)

Whether swing highs and swing lows are each making higher or lower extremes. This is the definition of trend that predates every indicator.

Stacked Moving Averages

Whether the 5/10/20/50/200 averages are ordered without overlap. A fully stacked set is the cleanest single description of an intact trend.

Stage Analysis

A four-stage taxonomy of where a security sits in a full cycle: basing, advancing, topping, declining. Stage 4 describes an active decline already in progress.

Trend Quality

How much of the move was directional travel rather than back-and-forth, combined with trend strength. It grades the CLEANLINESS of a trend, not its direction.

Trend Template

An explicit 8-part checklist for a structurally intact uptrend. Each criterion is a yes/no; the score is the count of yeses.

Weekly Trend Band

The 20-week SMA / 21-week EMA pair. Prolonged trades below the band have historically coincided with structurally weaker phases; it is a regime marker, not a trigger.

Momentum · 12

Chande Momentum Oscillator

Momentum expressed as the net of up-sums and down-sums over their total, on a −100 to +100 scale.

Composite RSI (3-component)

A three-part short-horizon oscillator (3-day RSI, streak length, percent-rank of the one-day return). Readings under 10 and over 90 are the tails of its own distribution.

Elder-Ray Bull/Bear Power

Bull power is the high less a 13-period average; bear power is the low less the same average. Divergences between them and price are the read.

Fisher Transform

A transform that forces price into a near-Gaussian distribution so extremes become sharply defined rather than gradual.

Intraday Momentum Index

RSI computed on intraday open-to-close moves only, so overnight gaps do not enter it.

MACD

The gap between a fast and a slow exponential average, versus its own average. Positive and widening means upward momentum is building; negative and widening, downward.

Momentum Acceleration

The second derivative of price: whether the rate of change is itself rising or falling.

Relative Strength Index (RSI)

Normalises the size of up-closes against down-closes over 14 bars onto a 0-100 scale. High readings mean recent gains dominated; low readings mean recent losses dominated.

Stochastic Oscillator

Locates the close inside the recent high-low range. Near 100 the security is closing at the top of its range; near 0 at the bottom.

Time-Series Momentum

The security's own trailing returns over four horizons (3/6/9/12 months). Where the horizons disagree, the disagreement section says so.

True Strength Index (TSI)

Double-smoothed momentum. The smoothing removes most of the noise a single-pass momentum measure carries.

Williams %R

Where the close sits in the recent high-low range, expressed as a negative percentage. It is the Stochastic read from the other end.

Exhaustion & reversal · 7

Combo Count

A second exhaustion count that runs in parallel to the Sequential count under stricter bar rules. Agreement between the two is the stronger reading.

Mean-Reversion Half-Life

Fits an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process to recent prices and reports how long a deviation has historically taken to decay by half.

Range Expansion Index (REI)

Compares the current range to the range two bars back. Consecutive extreme readings are what the measure is built to flag.

RSI Divergence

Price makes a new extreme that the oscillator does not confirm. It describes a loss of intensity in the existing move — it does not date a reversal.

Sequential Exhaustion Count

Counts consecutive bars that meet a strict price-comparison rule. A completed count marks a trend that has run long enough to be statistically stretched. It measures exhaustion, not timing.

Volume Climax

An outsized volume bar at the end of a run. Climactic volume is where a move most often changes hands, whichever way it then goes.

Wyckoff Spring / Upthrust

A spring is a break below support that fails and recovers; an upthrust is the mirror above resistance. Both describe a failed break, not a forecast.

Participation & flow · 15

Anchored VWAP

The volume-weighted average price anchored to a prior reference point — the average price everyone who traded since that anchor actually paid.

Chaikin Money Flow

Where each bar closes inside its own range, weighted by volume. Negative means closes cluster toward the low of the bar on heavier volume.

Cumulative Volume Delta

A running total of buying versus selling pressure inferred from where each bar closes. Divergence from price is the informative case.

Distribution Days

Higher-volume down days inside a 25-session window. The convention treats clusters of them as evidence of large-holder selling.

Force Index

Price change multiplied by volume. It answers whether the move is being carried by real participation or drifting on thin trade.

Institutional Flow

A composite of block-sized prints, accumulation days and closing-range behaviour used as a proxy for large-holder activity.

Klinger Volume Oscillator

A volume oscillator that separates short-term and long-term money flow. The cross of its two lines is the signal it defines.

Money Flow Index (MFI)

RSI computed on price multiplied by volume rather than price alone.

On-Balance Volume

A running total that adds the day's volume on up-closes and subtracts it on down-closes. When it moves against price, the two are described as diverging.

Pocket Pivot

An up-day whose volume exceeds the largest down-day volume of the prior ten sessions, taken while price holds above its short average.

Volume Dry-Up

A stretch of unusually low volume. It marks an absence of supply, which is a condition rather than a direction.

Volume Flow (CMF / OBV)

Chaikin Money Flow and On-Balance Volume infer whether volume is arriving on up-bars or down-bars — a proxy for accumulation versus distribution.

Volume Spread Analysis

Reads the relationship between a bar's spread, its close position and its volume. Named patterns describe effort against result.

Volume-Price Trend

Volume weighted by the percentage price change. Like OBV but scaled by the size of each move.

VPIN (order-flow toxicity)

An estimate of how much of recent volume was informed rather than uninformed. High readings mark disorderly two-way flow, not a direction.

Relative strength · 5

Mansfield Relative Strength

Relative strength against the benchmark, zero-centred on its own moving average, so the sign is the whole reading.

Relative Strength vs SPY

Return differential against the benchmark across three windows.

Relative-Strength New High

Whether the relative-strength line made a new high, and whether price confirmed it. The two can part company.

Seasonality

The average return of this security in this calendar month across its own history, with the sample size stated so the reader can weight it.

Weighted Momentum Percentile (1–99)

A 1-99 percentile rank of trailing relative price performance against the whole universe.

Structure & volatility · 18

Bollinger %B

Where price sits between two standard deviations of its own 20-day average. Mid-band readings carry no directional information.

Candlestick Pattern

A named multi-bar formation. Single patterns carry weak standalone information and are listed for completeness.

Chandelier Exit

A volatility-scaled trailing level anchored to the highest high. It measures how much room a move has before it would be classed as broken.

Composite Z-Score

How far price sits from its own mean in standard deviations, blended across several windows. Two or more deviations is the tail of its own history.

Drift Regime

The share of recent sessions that closed positive. It describes persistence rather than size.

Earnings Proximity

Scheduled events compress the value of every price-based measure in this document, because the next repricing is driven by information none of them contain.

Gap

An opening print away from the prior close. Whether it filled the same session is the informative part.

Hurst Exponent / Choppiness

Both describe HOW price moves — trending versus mean-reverting — and neither carries direction. Listed as no-lean by construction.

Inside Bar

A bar wholly inside the prior bar's range. It marks a pause in which neither side extended.

Liquidity (Amihud)

How much price moves per dollar traded. A risk and execution characteristic, not a direction.

Noise Ratio

The ratio of net travel to total travel. Low noise means the path was direct; high noise means it wandered.

Options-Implied Expected Move

The move the options market is currently pricing for one session and for five, derived from at-the-money implied volatility.

Pattern Confluence

The count of independent chart formations pointing the same way at the same time.

Price Acceleration

Whether price is extending faster than its own volatility would ordinarily support — the arithmetic definition of a parabolic move.

Range Expansion / NR7

The current bar's range against its own recent distribution. NR7 is the narrowest range of the last seven bars.

Volatility Contraction Pattern (VCP)

A sequence of progressively tighter pullbacks on falling volume. It describes contraction; it says nothing about which way the contraction resolves.

Volatility Regime

The size of a typical daily range relative to its own history. Directionless by construction.

Volatility Squeeze (BB/KC)

Volatility bands (2-sigma) inside Keltner channels. It says volatility is unusually compressed, not which way it releases.

Index internals · 8

Breadth Thrust (10-day advance ratio)

A rare condition in which the share of advancing issues climbs from washed-out to broad in ten sessions. It is either present or it is not; most days it is not.

Credit Stress

What lenders charge the weakest borrowers. Credit is priced by people who are paid to be early about deterioration, so a widening tier is the state historically associated with lower equity prices; a normal tier is simply the absence of that signal.

Cross-Sectional Dispersion

How far individual members are moving away from each other. Low dispersion means the index is moving as one block; high dispersion means the average is hiding a wide spread underneath it. Directionless by construction.

Index Put/Call Ratio

Index puts traded against index calls. A high reading means more downside hedging is being bought; the historical record reads that as caution AND as crowding in equal measure, so we print the level and take no lean from it.

Market Calendar Seasonality

A sum of calendar effects — turn-of-month, day-of-week, the four-year political cycle, option-expiry week. It is the weakest evidence on this page and it is printed at its own weight: one row, counted once, alongside everything else.

McClellan Oscillator / Summation Index

Net advancing minus declining issues, smoothed. It measures how MANY members are participating, which the index price itself cannot show: the same move can come from five names or from four hundred, and this is the number that separates the two.

Turbulence & Absorption

How unusual today's cross-asset move is against its own history, and how much of the market's variance sits in a single factor. High absorption means the market is tightly coupled, so shocks travel further. It measures fragility, not direction.

Volatility Risk Premium

How much more (or less) the options market is charging for volatility than the index has actually delivered. It describes the PRICE of protection, not the direction of the index, so it carries no lean by construction.