if you create an Oscillator from the directional movement, then you can smooth it out with a small MA,.

Per1:=14;
A:=Mov(Mov(PDI(Per1),3,E),3,E)-Mov(Mov(MDI(Per1),3,E),3,E);
Sig:=Mov(A,5,E);
B:= (A-Sig)*2;
Buy:=Cross(B,0);
Sell:=Cross(0,B);
D:=If(BarsSince(Buy)<BarsSince(Sell),1,0);
D>Ref(D,-1)

"question: is there another formula that would give the equivalent signals for a downturn?"

I have tried to answer my own question by turning a few of the items in Henry's formula back-to-front, as follows:-

Per1:=14;
A:=Mov(Mov(PDI(Per1),3,E),3,E)-Mov(Mov(MDI(Per1),3,E),3,E);
Sig:=Mov(A,5,E);
B:= (A-Sig)*2;
Buy:=Cross(0,B);
Sell:=Cross(B,0);
D:=If(BarsSince(buy)>BarsSince(sell),1,0);
D<Ref(D,-1)

considering that the original formula is really over my head, the result on chart turned out not too bad. but not as precise as it ought to be, by comparison with the "positive" formula.

hey amory.... twice now you've mentioned witches hats when describing a plotted line..... which is a good description.... those 'witches hats' can become somewhat cluttering so my preference is to change the style to histogram.... the slender lines seem less obtrusive while giving the same information.... better still is just to create a trend ribbon....

with that in mind we can change wabbits/henry's code a bit to enable us to color the up bar green and down bar red individually.....h

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prd1:=14;
prd2:=5;
A:=Dema(PDI(prd1)-MDI(prd1),prd2);
Sig:=Mov(A,prd2,E);

tr:=A>Sig;

long:=tr AND Alert(tr=0,2);
short:=tr=0 AND Alert(tr=1,2);

If(long,1,0);
If(short,-1,0);

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hey jose..... in reguards to your prior post here, i printed/studied everything you had written back when i first purchased meta, even though most of it was beyond my abilities at the time..... must of missed the " - "..... i see it now....

anyone considering learning to code could get a head start by doing the same printing/studying of jose's codes...... primarily for 3 reasons....

first, is his consistent use of comments .... it helps....

second, is you can be assured the code works..... many sites have twice the formulas but most are just collections/submissions without reguard to errors....

third, is his readable method ...... readable code is easier to grasp..... we can't learn what we can't grasp....

and enough of that.....

hey jose.... true, often times that last line reference can be a pain..... sometimes we can get around it by using "FmlVar" .... that way we can to reference addtional " variable" lines in the orignal formula......such as, .....h

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long:= FmlVar("wabbitts di","LONG") ;

short:= FmlVar("wabbitts di","SHORT") ;

long;
-short;

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