TRIX

The rate of change of a heavily smoothed moving average.

What it measures

TRIX smooths the close three times with exponential moving averages of the same length, then gives the percentage change of the result from one bar to the next. The triple smoothing filters out small swings, so TRIX turns only on sustained moves. With signalPeriods, it adds an EMA of TRIX.

How traders read it

Traders read a cross of zero as a change of trend and a cross of the signal line as an earlier hint. On hourly forex bars the values are tiny, a few thousandths of a percent.

Formula

triple EMA = EMA(EMA(EMA(close, periods), periods), periods)
TRIX = (triple EMA − triple EMA one bar ago) / triple EMA one bar ago × 100
signal = EMA(TRIX, signalPeriods)

Settings and output

Call: trix(periods, signalPeriods)

Setting	Chart default
`periods`: Periods	15
`signalPeriods`: Signal Periods	9

What you get: a list of 2, in this order: 1. a number (“trix”); 2. a number (“trix Signal”).

Warm-up: with trix(15, 9), it asks for 15 bars of history and a run-up of 99, and its first value came on bar 53 of the example data.

Chart

TRIX 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 lines = trix(15, 9);
  if (OPEN_POSITIONS_COUNT === 0 && lines[0] > 0 && lines[0] > lines[1]) {
    openPosition("BUY", { quantity: 10000, stopLossPips: 30, takeProfitPips: 60 });
  }
}