AwesomeOscillator — Awesome Oscillator

Bill Williams’ momentum gauge: a fast simple average of the bar midpoint minus a slow one. Positive and rising reads as bullish momentum; the classic signals (twin peaks, saucer) are all patterns in its histogram.

Signature

AwesomeOscillator(fast, slow, on=<source>)

Argument	Type	Required	Notes
fast	int Param or literal	Yes	Fast SMA of the midpoint. Convention 5. Bounds 1–100.
slow	int Param or literal	Yes	Slow SMA of the midpoint. Convention 34. Bounds 2–200.
on=	symbol	No	Source symbol. Defaults to the trade symbol. Reads high and low.

Formula

$$ \text{AO} = \text{SMA}\left(\tfrac{H+L}{2}, fast\right) - \text{SMA}\left(\tfrac{H+L}{2}, slow\right) $$

Warmup

slow bars; 0 until both windows are full.

Reading the value

ao.value
ao > 0
ao.crossed_above(0)

Example

class AoZeroCross(Strategy):
    """Long on a zero-line cross of the Awesome Oscillator."""
    trade = Symbol()
    sizing = FixedCapital()

    def execute(self):
        ao = AwesomeOscillator(5, 34, on=self.trade)
        if ao.crossed_above(0) and self.trade.is_flat:
            self.buy(self.trade, reason="AO zero cross up")
        if ao.crossed_below(0) and self.trade.is_long:
            self.sell(self.trade, self.trade.position, reason="AO zero cross down")

Notes

• Bill Williams; periods are conventionally fixed at 5/34 — exposed as Params anyway, with bounds kept tight because the platform pre-allocates buffers to max.
• Proven by an assert-via-trade run on SPY daily (matched a strategy-side midpoint-SMA reference on every bar; zero alarm trades).
• AcceleratorOscillator (Tier 2) is AO minus its own 5-bar SMA.