AcceleratorOscillator — Accelerator Oscillator

The Awesome Oscillator minus its own simple average: momentum’s acceleration rather than its level. Bill Williams’ argument is that acceleration turns before momentum does, so this changes sign earlier than AO.

Signature

AcceleratorOscillator(fast, slow, smooth, on=<source>)

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

Formula

$$ \text{AC} = \text{AO} - \text{SMA}(\text{AO}, s), \quad \text{AO} = \text{SMA}(\text{mid}, f) - \text{SMA}(\text{mid}, l) $$

Warmup

slow + smooth bars; 0 until then.

Reading the value

ac.value
ac > 0
ac.crossed_above(0)

Example

class AccelEntry(Strategy):
    """Enter when acceleration turns positive with momentum already up."""
    trade = Symbol()
    sizing = FixedCapital()

    def execute(self):
        ac = AcceleratorOscillator(5, 34, 5, on=self.trade)
        ao = AwesomeOscillator(5, 34, on=self.trade)
        if ac.crossed_above(0) and ao.value > 0 and self.trade.is_flat:
            self.buy(self.trade, reason="Accelerating")
        if ac.crossed_below(0) and self.trade.is_long:
            self.sell(self.trade, self.trade.position, reason="Decelerating")

Notes

• Bill Williams, New Trading Dimensions (1998).
• Proven by an assert-via-trade run on SPY daily (stayed within the bound implied by its own AO on every bar; zero alarm trades).
• Earlier than AwesomeOscillator and correspondingly noisier — most useful as a confirmation rather than a trigger.