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.

Who developed the Intraday Momentum Index?

Tushar Chande, the quantitative analyst also known for VIDYA and the Aroon indicator, presented the IMI in The New Technical Trader (1994), co-written with Stanley Kroll. The design goal was explicit: combine candlestick open-close logic with RSI-style normalization so the result could be read with standard oscillator technique.

What are the standard settings for the IMI?

A 14-period lookback with 70/30 bands is the common default, borrowed directly from RSI convention. Shorter lookbacks produce more signals and more noise; some traders widen the bands to 80/20 on volatile instruments. As with RSI, settings are conventions to be tested, not properties of the market.

How is the IMI different from Qstick?

Both are Chande-era measures of candle bodies. Qstick is a plain moving average of close minus open, unbounded and centered on zero, so its scale varies by instrument. IMI normalizes the same bodies into a 0-100 index, which is what allows fixed overbought and oversold bands to apply across symbols.

Does the IMI work in strong trends?

It pins, like most bounded oscillators: a persistent uptrend keeps printing bullish bodies and holds the reading elevated, so overbought is not by itself a sell. In trends the midline bias read and divergences carry more information, and many traders defer to a trend filter before acting on any band signal.

Concept

Intraday Momentum Index

Intraday Momentum Index is a Momentum & Oscillators concept. The Library holds 1 implementation, a working definition you can pull into Quant.

IMI

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Intraday Momentum Index

Indicator

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.

Chande presented the IMI in The New Technical Trader (1994), written with Stanley Kroll. His observation was that classic momentum tools discard the information candlestick readers care about most, the relationship between each bar's open and close, and that RSI's arithmetic could digest that information directly. The IMI is best understood as a translation layer: candlestick sentiment, expressed in oscillator form so it can be thresholded, screened, and compared like any other bounded study.

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.

The arithmetic follows the RSI template, with close-minus-open substituted for close-to-close change: up-bar bodies play the role of gains, down-bar bodies the role of losses, and the output is the up-body sum as a percentage of total body movement over the window. A reading of 50 means bullish and bearish bodies balanced; distance from 50 measures how one-sided sessions have been. Like any bounded oscillator it can pin near an extreme in a strong trend, so elevated readings describe persistence rather than an automatic reversal.

How to read the Intraday Momentum Index

IMI plots in a subpanel on a 0-100 scale, and the routine matches RSI with one extra check for gaps.

1Apply the common 14-period setting and mark the 70 and 30 bands; some traders widen to 80/20 on volatile symbols.
2Treat band entries as conditions rather than triggers: above 70 the market keeps closing over its opens, and most practitioners wait for the reading to curl back through the band before fading it.
3Run the gap check: compare IMI with standard RSI on the same chart. When RSI is stretched but IMI is not, gaps rather than intrabar buying are carrying the move.
4Scan swing points for divergence against price, including hidden divergence in trends, exactly as with other bounded oscillators.
5In strong trends, downgrade the bands and read the 50 midline as the bias line: sustained readings above it mark buyer-controlled sessions, below it seller-controlled ones.

How it's calculated

An RSI-style oscillator built from intrabar open-to-close moves, bounded between 0 and 100.

\operatorname{up}_t = \max(C_t - O_t, 0)

\operatorname{down}_t = \max(O_t - C_t, 0)

\operatorname{SumUp} = \sum \operatorname{up}_t \text{ over the last } n \text{ bars}

\operatorname{SumDown} = \sum \operatorname{down}_t \text{ over the last } n \text{ bars}

\operatorname{IMI} = 100 \times \frac{\operatorname{SumUp}}{\operatorname{SumUp} + \operatorname{SumDown}}

O_t: open of bar t

C_t: close of bar t

t: bar index within the lookback

up_t: intrabar gain, C_t - O_t on an up bar, else 0

down_t: intrabar loss, O_t - C_t on a down bar, else 0

n: lookback length in bars (commonly 14)

SumUp: total of up_t over the window

SumDown: total of down_t over the window

IMI: oscillator value on a 0 to 100 scale

Introduced by Tushar Chande; read like RSI, with 70 commonly treated as overbought and 30 as oversold.

Because it uses each bar's open-to-close body, gaps between bars never enter the calculation.

Bars that close exactly at their open add nothing to either sum.

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.
As a mean-reversion timer in ranges: IMI extremes printed at range edges time fades better than the same readings in trends, often cross-checked against a stochastic oscillator for agreement.
As a bias filter: the 50 midline separates buying-dominant from selling-dominant stretches, a simpler read than band touches and useful when pairing IMI with trend tools such as MACD.

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.

Stochastic Oscillator: The stochastic locates the latest close within the recent high-low range, so it measures where price sits; IMI measures how sessions traveled from open to close, so it measures how price got there. A stochastic can read overbought from position alone, while IMI needs persistently bullish bodies.

Stochastic Momentum Index: The SMI refines the stochastic by measuring the close against the midpoint of the high-low range, double-smoothed and centered on zero. Like IMI it cares where price finishes, but it works from range midpoints over a window rather than summing individual open-to-close bodies.

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Momentum & Oscillators

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