Move Health

Its job in a momentum trade

It is the momentum reading itself: it says whether a move is strong and clean enough to hold, and when that strength is fading.

What it measures

Whether the current move deserves to be held. It combines three things: how many bars are making progress, how straight the path is, and how much ground the price covers per bar compared with an ordinary bar.

How it is computed

1. Each bar is scored on five checks: a high above the prior three highs, a low below the prior three lows, the bar's direction weighted by the size of its body, a close above a rising (or below a falling) seven-bar average, and implied volatility below (or above) its eleven-bar average.
2. The scores are added over a fast window of five bars and a slow window of ten.
3. Each total is multiplied by efficiency: the net price change over the window divided by the sum of every bar-to-bar change. A straight move keeps its score and a back-and-forth one loses it.
4. It is multiplied again by size: the net change per bar against the average bar range of the last 100 bars. A fast move is multiplied up to three times and a slow drift is reduced.
5. The stronger of the two windows is the reading. Inside ±25 the bar is gray, beyond ±25 it is dark green or red, and beyond ±100 it is bright.

How to read it

• Gray means no momentum right now. It does not mean the trend is over.
• Dark color means a real move is under way.
• Bright color means a strong move: large bars stacking in one direction.
• A reading that shrinks from bright to dark while the price is still extending says the push is running out.

How to trade it

• It is a tool for holding and trimming, not for entries. In the sessions it was tuned on, it turned on three to five bars into a move.
• While the reading is bright, stay in the trade.
• The first fall from bright to dark is the cue to trim. A return to gray is the cue to stop expecting follow-through.
• Ignore a single colored bar standing alone. Real moves produce several in a row, and an isolated spike has marked the last bar of a move as often as the first.

What it cannot tell you

• It reads bursts, not trend days. A session can fall all day in slow steps and stay gray for most of it.
• It is late on V-shaped reversals, because both windows still hold the bars of the move that just ended.
• It was tuned by eye on a handful of sessions in November 2026 and has not been tested as a trading rule.