Concept
Coppock Curve
Coppock Curve is a Momentum & Oscillators concept. The Library holds 2 implementations, each one a working definition you can pull into Quant.
Top Coppock Curve indicators
2 total
What is the Coppock Curve?
The Coppock Curve is a long-horizon momentum gauge built from smoothed rate of change. The classic construction, published by economist Edwin Coppock in Barron's in 1962, adds a 14-month and an 11-month ROC of a stock index and smooths the sum with a 10-month weighted moving average. Its design brief was narrow: flag major bear-market bottoms on monthly charts. The often-repeated origin story is that Coppock chose the lookbacks after church advisers estimated that mourning lasts 11 to 14 months, reasoning that a bear market is processed like a bereavement.
The canonical signal is a single event: the curve turning upward from below the zero line, read as the start of a new long-term advance. Coppock offered no sell side. Later users added downturns from above zero as warnings, scaled the parameters down for weekly and daily charts, and applied the tool beyond equity indexes; those are extensions, and on fast timeframes the curve turns far more often and far less selectively than the monthly original.
How traders use it
- As a long-cycle bottom detector on monthly index charts: a decline below zero followed by an upward hook is the classic buy condition, usually evaluated on closed monthly bars so an intramonth hook cannot vanish before the signal is final.
- As a slow regime backdrop: above zero and rising supports risk-on positioning, below zero and falling says long-term momentum is negative, a role similar to a higher-timeframe trend filter.
- Scaled to weekly or daily charts with shorter ROC and smoothing lengths, where it behaves like other smoothed momentum composites and is traded on zero-line crosses and divergences rather than rare cycle turns.
Coppock Curve vs related momentum composites
Know Sure Thing: Martin Pring's KST generalizes the same idea. Where the Coppock Curve sums two ROCs under one weighted smoothing and waits for one canonical signal, KST blends four smoothed ROCs with rising weights and trades signal-line and zero-line crosses in both directions.
ROC: ROC is the raw ingredient: a single lookback, no smoothing, read from zero crosses and extremes bar by bar. The Coppock Curve is a weighted, smoothed composite of two ROCs, deliberately slow so it turns only a handful of times per cycle on monthly data.
Related concepts · Rate-of-change cluster
Concept family
Momentum & Oscillators
91 concepts mapped · 72 in the Library
Coppock Curve FAQ
How is the Coppock Curve calculated?
Take a 14-period rate of change and an 11-period rate of change of closing prices, add them, then smooth the sum with a 10-period weighted moving average. The original applies this to monthly index closes; platform implementations keep the same structure and let you change the three lengths.
Is the Coppock Curve only a buy signal?
As designed, yes: Coppock's signal was the curve hooking upward from below zero on a monthly chart, marking a candidate bear-market bottom. Downturns from above zero are a later, less standardized reading. Either way it is a slow gauge, and an early hook can still fail inside an ongoing bear market.
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