Concept
Intraday Momentum Index
Intraday Momentum Index is a Momentum & Oscillators concept. The Library holds 2 implementations, each one a working definition you can pull into Quant.
IMI
Top Intraday Momentum Index indicators
2 total
What is the Intraday Momentum Index?
The Intraday Momentum Index (IMI) is an RSI-style oscillator computed on candle bodies instead of close-to-close changes. Introduced by Tushar Chande, it sums the bodies of up candles (close above open) and of down candles (close below open) over a lookback, commonly 14 bars, and expresses the up-body total as a percentage of all body movement. The result runs from 0 to 100 and is read with familiar overbought/oversold bands, often 70 and 30.
The 'intraday' in the name refers to movement inside each bar, from its open to its close, not to intraday timeframes; the calculation works identically on daily or weekly charts. The design imports candlestick logic: a market that keeps closing above its opens is being bought during the session, whatever the overnight gaps contribute. That is exactly where IMI's read diverges from standard RSI, which counts gaps as part of each day's change.
How traders use it
- As a candle-body overbought/oversold gauge: readings above roughly 70 mark stretches where sessions keep closing above their opens, readings below 30 the reverse, with most traders waiting for the reading to curl back before fading it.
- As a gap filter on RSI: when RSI is elevated mainly because of overnight gaps while IMI stays modest, the intrabar auction is not confirming the strength, and the reverse when IMI leads.
- As a divergence source, comparing IMI's swing highs and lows against price the same way other bounded oscillators are used.
Intraday Momentum Index vs related oscillators
RSI: Same 0-to-100 scale and similar bands, different raw input. RSI uses close-to-close change, so gaps count toward momentum; IMI uses close-minus-open bodies, so only intrabar movement counts. In gap-heavy markets the two can disagree meaningfully.
Qstick: Both measure candle bodies. Qstick is a plain moving average of close minus open, unbounded and centered on zero; IMI normalizes the same bodies into a bounded index so fixed overbought/oversold bands apply.
Related concepts · Classic single-name oscillators
Concept family
Momentum & Oscillators
91 concepts mapped · 72 in the Library
Intraday Momentum Index FAQ
How is the Intraday Momentum Index different from RSI?
RSI accumulates close-to-close gains and losses, so overnight gaps count toward momentum. IMI accumulates candle bodies (close minus open), so it measures only what happened inside each bar. Both run 0 to 100 with similar bands; when the two disagree, the difference usually traces back to gaps.
Does the Intraday Momentum Index only work on intraday charts?
No. 'Intraday' describes the input, the open-to-close move within each bar, not the chart timeframe. The indicator computes on any timeframe, and daily charts are a common home because the open-versus-close relationship there carries classic candlestick meaning. Weekly and monthly bars work the same way.
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