Commodity Channel Index (CCI)

How far the price has strayed from its average, measured against how far it usually strays.

What it measures

CCI compares the typical price, (high + low + close) / 3, with its own moving average, and divides by the mean deviation. The constant of 0.015 is Lambert’s, chosen so most values fall between −100 and +100.

How traders read it

Traders read above +100 as unusually strong and below −100 as unusually weak. Some trade the move out of those zones, others the move into them as the start of a trend. The last two settings only move the reference lines on the chart.

Formula

typical price = (high + low + close) / 3
CCI = (typical price − SMA(typical price)) / (constant × mean deviation of typical price)

Settings and output

Call: cci(periods, constant, overboughtLine, oversoldLine)

Setting	Chart default
`periods`: Periods	20
`constant`: Constant	0.015
`overboughtLine`: Overbought Line	100
`oversoldLine`: Oversold Line	-100

What you get: a number.

Warm-up: with cci(20, 0.015, 100, -100), it asks for 0 bars of history and a run-up of 20, and its first value came on bar 20 of the example data.

Chart

Commodity Channel Index (CCI) drawn by its own code on example prices

The prices are made up, hourly, and the same on every page, so the chart shows how the indicator behaves, not how a market behaved.

In an algorithm

function onIntervalClose() {
  const value = cci(20, 0.015);
  if (OPEN_POSITIONS_COUNT === 0 && value > 100) {
    openPosition("BUY", { quantity: 10000, stopLossPips: 25, takeProfitPips: 50 });
  }
}

Pass only the first two settings in an algorithm; the lines are for the chart.