Explosive trend
0 when the 8, 21 and 55 EMAs are not stacked and rising; 1 to 5 for how fast they are moving.
ExplosiveTrend checks for a full EMA stack. On a bullish bar the close must sit above the 8-bar EMA, which sits above the 21-bar EMA, which sits above the 55-bar EMA, and all three EMAs must have risen on the last bar; bearish is the mirror image. Without a stack the value is 0. With one, the indicator sums the three EMAs' one-bar moves (the 55-bar move at half weight) and compares that sum with the average of the last 15 sums, current bar included: 1 up to 1.2 times that average, 2 up to 1.6, 3 up to 2.0, 4 up to 2.5, and 5 above that. Despite the name, this is speed, not acceleration: it never measures a change in slope.
How to read it
- The line sits in its own pane below the price, on a 0 to 5 scale, and never goes negative.
- 0 means the EMAs are not stacked and rising together. 1 means they are at normal speed; 2 and 3 are above-average pushes.
- 4 and 5 are rare: the 95th percentile on the September 2026 SPY one-minute sample at defaults is 4.
- A jump to 4 or 5 while price already sits on the stacked side of all three averages marks a surge worth a look.
What it outputs
- Trend strength
- 0 when the EMAs are not stacked and rising together; 1 to 5 for how fast they move against their last 15 bars. Unsigned.
Settings
- ema_fast
- Fastest average in the stack (default 8). Shorter hugs price, so the stack breaks on small pullbacks and reacts sooner. Longer lags and holds through dips. Keep it below mid and slow: the code does not check order, and reversed periods rarely pass in a trend.
- ema_mid
- Middle average (default 21). Shorter flips the fast-over-mid and mid-over-slow tests on smaller swings, so the value drops to 0 more often. Longer changes slowly, so the stack survives choppier stretches and breaks later at a turn.
- ema_slow
- Slowest average, the trend anchor (default 55, max 1100). Shorter ends the stack sooner after a reversal. Longer keeps the stack ordered longer after a turn, and its small one-bar moves add little to the speed reading.
Pitfalls
- Named acceleration, but it is speed: the sum of the averages' one-bar moves, scaled to the last 15 bars. A quiet stretch lets a small move read 4 or 5.
- The value is unsigned. A stacked downtrend scores as high as an uptrend, so read direction from where price sits against the averages.
- Looks broken: a value-only read before the bar commits adds that bar's speed to the 15-bar history a second time, so values depend on how the indicator is read. A plain run is not affected.