Explosive move detector
Flags rare sharp upward bursts on heavy volume and wide range; it never fired on SPY at default settings.
The signal fires only when four tests pass on the same one-minute bar. The close must sit more than 2% above the oldest close in the lookback window, and this bar's percent change must beat the prior bar's by more than 1.5 percentage points. Volume must exceed 1.8 times the average of the last 2 × lookback bars, and the bar's range must exceed 1.2 times the window's average range. When all four pass, the marker's value is the close price; otherwise nothing is drawn.
How to read it
- Markers appear only where all four tests pass on the same candle, so most charts show none.
- A marker is a one-bar burst on heavy volume and wide range that lifted price more than 2% above the window's starting close.
- It is not a confirmed breakout; the burst can reverse on the next bars.
- Each marker sits at that candle's close, so read it against the candle rather than a price level.
What it outputs
- Explosive up move
- Marks each one-minute candle where a sharp upward burst passes all four tests. The marker's value is that candle's close.
When it fires
Fires when a bar passes all four tests at once: a sharp one-bar gain, volume over 1.8 times the recent average, a wide range, and a close more than 2% above the window's oldest close. It marks a heavy-volume push up, not a confirmed trend.
Settings
- lookback
- Bars in the window. Longer measures the 2% rise from further back and smooths the volume and range baselines; shorter reacts to recent bars, so the baselines swing more. Below 3 the code reads bars that do not exist and raises an error.
- accel_threshold
- Minimum jump in one-bar percent change over the prior bar, as a fraction: 0.015 means 1.5 points. Raising it demands a sharper kick and fires less. Lowering toward 0 admits any upward acceleration, and negative values also admit slowing moves.
- vol_surge_threshold
- Volume multiple against the average of the last 2 × lookback bars, including the bar itself. Raising it allows only heavier bars. Lowering toward 1 lets ordinary volume pass. At or above 2 × lookback no bar can pass, so 30 and up disables it at lookback 15.
Pitfalls
- Never fired on the SPY sample month at default settings, so it is rare here. Its thresholds may not suit your symbol. The looser presets were not measured.
- Lookback below 3 raises an error, since the code reads three bars back. The slider's minimum of 1 is not usable.
- The average true range uses each bar's own close as the gap reference and skips the newest bar, so the 1.2 range test is approximate, not a true average range.