Average True Range

The Average True Range is a measure of market volatility. So a useful indicator I use as a guide to set Stop Losses, instead of using a fixed Stop Loss for all market conditions. My rule of thumb is to take the ATR at 3 time frames (higher) away my trading chart.

True Range is the greatest of the following three values:

1. Difference between the current maximum and minimum (high and low); when the last closing price is within the current max. & min.

2. Difference between the previous closing price and the current maximum; when the current minimum is higher than the last closing price.

3. Difference between the previous closing price and the current minimum; when the current max. is lower than the last closing price.

Default setting Average True Range (14) means a MA of 14 periods.
Plot of MA(14)










Another interpretation of the ATR as volatility indicator is:
The higher the value of the indicator, the higher the probability of a trend change; the lower the indicator’s value, the weaker the trend’s movement is.

Accelerator & Awesome Oscillators

Though I don't use many technical indicators, I like to take a read and review them once in a while. I simply enjoy the insights provided by these indicators.

The Accelerator indicator (AC) is suppose to measure the acceleration & deceleration of the current driving force! Take a closer look at its formulae:

AO = SMA(median price, 5) - SMA(median price, 34)
AC = AO-SMA(AO,5)

where:
SMA — Simple Moving Averages;
AO — Awesome Oscillator.

Do the formulae above look similar to MACD?
1. Remember, the MACD line is also the difference of 2 Moving Averages (MA), the Exponential MA instead of Simple MA. So it is analogous to the AO formula.

2. The MACD Histogram (or MA Oscillator) is given by:
OSMA = MACD - Signal; where the Signal is the MA(9) of the MACD line.
So it is the same form as the Accelerator (AC) formula

The differences are the default parameters in usage:
MACD (12, 26, 9) - if we change to MACD (5, 34, 5), then it is equivalent to the default settings of AC & AO!

See the results below (double click to enlarge graph).










The MACD (blue) line moves in sync with the AO envelope (green & red bars).
The MACD Histogram (yellow) is almost identical to the AC envelope (green & red bars).

In other words MACD also conveys the same underlying information only if you know how to decipher and interpret them with different parameter values!