ElderForceIndex
Volume-weighted price change, smoothed: positive when rising bars carry the volume, negative when falling bars do.
Each bar's close-to-close change is multiplied by that bar's volume, so a move counts for more when more shares trade. An exponential moving average then smooths that product over ema_window bars (13 by default, about 13 minutes on one-minute bars). The result is in price-times-shares units, so its size follows volume rather than the price level.
How to read it
- Sits in its own pane below the price; zero is the balance point.
- Above zero, recent price moves have been up on net; below zero, down on net, weighted by volume.
- Lines at +6,000 and -6,000 mark the rough outer band: on SPY at defaults about one reading in ten lies beyond them.
- Watch zero crossings and turns in direction; the absolute size mostly reflects how much volume traded.
What it outputs
- Force index (EMA)
- Smoothed price change times volume: above zero means volume-weighted moves were up on net, below zero down on net.
Settings
- ema_window
- How many bars the smoothing averages over. Shorter (3 to 5) tracks each bar's volume-weighted move and turns often; longer (40 and up) gives a slow line that changes sign mainly on sustained moves. At 1 the line is the raw per-bar product.
Pitfalls
- The scale follows volume, not price: a volume spike can produce readings far outside the usual band (the one-month sample reached -933,108 and +149,883), which squeezes everything else in the pane.
- The line is nearly uncorrelated with the price level (correlation about 0.02 on the sample), so do not read it as a second price line.
- The sample is one month of SPY bars (September 2026); the typical band and extremes will differ on other symbols or in other regimes.