Volatility compression
How narrow the price's recent spread is against its recent average; higher means a tighter squeeze.
Each bar it takes twice the standard deviation of the recent closes and divides it by their average, giving the spread as a share of price. It compares that width with the average width over the recent lookback bars. The score is 10 times (average width ÷ current width − 1) plus 1 divided by the width in percent, and it is never shown below 0. Highs and lows only hold back the first readings; they do not change the value.
How to read it
- The line sits in its own pane below the price and never drops below 0.
- Rising means the bands are narrowing against their recent width, the squeeze that often comes before a large move.
- Zero means the bands are wider than their recent average, or the window is still filling.
- On SPY one-minute bars in September 2026 the median reading was about 24, and only the top 5% of bars went above about 83.
What it outputs
- Squeeze score
- How tight the spread of recent closes is against its recent average width. Zero or more; higher means tighter.
Settings
- bb_window
- Bars of closes used for the spread. Raising it smooths the reading and reacts slowly, so a squeeze shows only after a long calm; lowering it follows the last few minutes and swings more on noise.
- compression_lookback
- Bars of past widths averaged as the baseline. Lowering it compares against the last few minutes, so the score moves fast and flickers; raising it compares against a longer baseline (100 bars is about 100 minutes on one-minute data) and lengthens the warm-up.
Pitfalls
- Despite the name and the high and low inputs, the score uses only the closes' spread; the highs and lows just hold back the first readings.
- There is no ceiling: nearly flat closes push readings into the thousands (the sample max was about 6,490) and squash normal bars onto the floor. Exactly flat closes read 0, the same as widening bands.
- A high reading says a squeeze is building, not which way price will break; it carries no direction, so pair it with a direction signal.