Developed by Welles Wilder, the Swing Index seeks to
isolate the "real" price of a security by comparing the relationships
between the current prices (i.e., open, high, low, and close) and the
previous period's prices.
Interpretation
The Swing Index is primarily used as a component of
the Accumulation Swing Index.
Example
The following chart shows the British Pound and the
Swing Index.
You can see that by itself, the Swing Index is an
erratic plot. The value of this indicator develops when it is
accumulated into the Accumulation Swing Index.
Calculation
Although it is beyond the scope of this book to
completely define the Swing Index, the basic formula is shown below.
Step-by-step instructions on calculating the Swing Index are provided in
Wilder's book, New Concepts In Technical Trading Systems.
Where:
The following table lists the limit moves for
several commodities. You can get a list of limit moves from your broker.
Table 14
Commodity
Limit Move
Coffee
$0.06
Gold
$75.00
Heating Oil
$0.04
Hogs
$0.015
Soybeans
$0.30
T-Bonds
$3.00
You may need to adjust the limit moves shown in the
above table based on the position of the decimal in your data. For
example, if the price of corn is quoted as $2.45, the limit move would
be $0.10. However, if the price of corn is quoted as $245.00, the limit
move would be $10.00.
If the security does not have a limit move (e.g., a
stock or some futures), use an extremely high value (e.g., $30,000).