GlossaryAdvanced
Directional Movement
The portion of a period's price range that represents upward or downward movement beyond the prior period.
Directional movement measures how much of a period's price action represents a genuine new extreme beyond the prior period's range — a positive directional movement value reflects upward movement beyond the prior high; a negative value, downward movement beyond the prior low.
Directional movement is the raw input behind ADX's +DI and −DI lines, smoothed and normalized by True Range to produce those directional indicators, which ADX itself then combines into a single trend-strength reading.
Examples
- A period that sets a new high higher than the prior period's high has positive directional movement.
- ADX's own +DI and −DI lines are built directly from smoothed directional movement data.