The full name of this indicator is R-Squared Adaptive Fisher Transform w/ Dynamic Zones and Divergences. This is an R-squared adaptive Fisher transform with adjustable dynamic zones, signals, alerts, and divergences.
What is Fisher Transform? The Fisher Transform is a technical indicator created by John F. Ehlers that converts prices into a Gaussian normal distribution.
The indicator highlights when prices have moved to an extreme, based on recent prices. This may help in spotting turning points in the price of an asset. It also helps show the trend and isolate the price waves within a trend.
What is R-squared Adaptive? One tool available in forecasting the trendiness of the breakout is the coefficient of determination ( R-squared ), a statistical measurement.
The R-squared indicates linear strength between the security's price (the Y - axis) and time (the X - axis). The R-squared is the percentage of squared error that the linear regression can eliminate if it were used as the predictor instead of the mean value. If the R-squared were 0.99, then the linear regression would eliminate 99% of the error for prediction versus predicting closing prices using a simple moving average .
R-squared is used here to derive an r-squared value that is then modified by a user input "factor"
What are Dynamic Zones? As explained in "Stocks & Commodities V15:7 (306-310): Dynamic Zones by Leo Zamansky, Ph .D., and David Stendahl"
Most indicators use a fixed zone for buy and sell signals. Here’ s a concept based on zones that are responsive to past levels of the indicator.
One approach to active investing employs the use of oscillators to exploit tradable market trends. This investing style follows a very simple form of logic: Enter the market only when an oscillator has moved far above or below traditional trading lev- els. However, these oscillator- driven systems lack the ability to evolve with the market because they use fixed buy and sell zones. Traders typically use one set of buy and sell zones for a bull market and substantially different zones for a bear market. And therein lies the problem.
Once traders begin introducing their market opinions into trading equations, by changing the zones, they negate the system’s mechanical nature. The objective is to have a system automatically define its own buy and sell zones and thereby profitably trade in any market — bull or bear. Dynamic zones offer a solution to the problem of fixed buy and sell zones for any oscillator-driven system.
An indicator’s extreme levels can be quantified using statistical methods. These extreme levels are calculated for a certain period and serve as the buy and sell zones for a trading system. The repetition of this statistical process for every value of the indicator creates values that become the dynamic zones. The zones are calculated in such a way that the probability of the indicator value rising above, or falling below, the dynamic zones is equal to a given probability input set by the trader.
To better understand dynamic zones, let's first describe them mathematically and then explain their use. The dynamic zones definition:
Find V such that: For dynamic zone buy: P{X <= V}=P1 For dynamic zone sell: P{X >= V}=P2
where P1 and P2 are the probabilities set by the trader, X is the value of the indicator for the selected period and V represents the value of the dynamic zone.
The probability input P1 and P2 can be adjusted by the trader to encompass as much or as little data as the trader would like. The smaller the probability, the fewer data values above and below the dynamic zones. This translates into a wider range between the buy and sell zones. If a 10% probability is used for P1 and P2, only those data values that make up the top 10% and bottom 10% for an indicator are used in the construction of the zones. Of the values, 80% will fall between the two extreme levels. Because dynamic zone levels are penetrated so infrequently, when this happens, traders know that the market has truly moved into overbought or oversold territory.
Calculating the Dynamic Zones
The algorithm for the dynamic zones is a series of steps. First, decide the value of the lookback period t. Next, decide the value of the probability Pbuy for buy zone and value of the probability Psell for the sell zone.
For i=1, to the last lookback period, build the distribution f(x) of the price during the lookback period i. Then find the value Vi1 such that the probability of the price less than or equal to Vi1 during the lookback period i is equal to Pbuy. Find the value Vi2 such that the probability of the price greater or equal to Vi2 during the lookback period i is equal to Psell. The sequence of Vi1 for all periods gives the buy zone. The sequence of Vi2 for all periods gives the sell zone.
In the algorithm description, we have: Build the distribution f(x) of the price during the lookback period i. The distribution here is empirical namely, how many times a given value of x appeared during the lookback period. The problem is to find such x that the probability of a price being greater or equal to x will be equal to a probability selected by the user. Probability is the area under the distribution curve. The task is to find such value of x that the area under the distribution curve to the right of x will be equal to the probability selected by the user. That x is the dynamic zone.