Volume-adjusted MA

Volume-adjusted MA is the exacting rebuild of Richard Arms' elastic average: instead of averaging the last N bars, it averages the last N increments of business. One increment equals average bar volume times Arms' 0.67 factor, each bar's weight is its volume divided by that increment, and the volume-adjusted moving average stretches across as many bars as spending the budget requires: a handful when tape is busy, far more in drift. The line colors by slope, an optional SMA overlays the time-weight benchmark, and a dashboard reports the increment size, effective lookback, budget fill, and gap versus the SMA.

How to Trade the Volume-adjusted MA?

• Rising / falling slope: a participation-weighted trend read. Quiet bars barely move the line.
• Price crossing the line: the classic moving-average cross, weighted by activity; both directions carry alerts and optional markers.
• Gap versus the Comparison SMA: the lines separate where heavy trade disagrees with the calendar; pair crossings have their own alerts.

It slots into the trend toolkit anywhere a time-based average would sit.

Volume-adjusted MA Settings

• Source (default close): the price each bar contributes.
• Length (Volume Increments) (default 20): the volume budget N, measured in increments rather than bars.
• Increment Factor (default 0.67): Arms' published scaling; raise for longer reach, lower for a faster window.
• Average Volume Sample (default All Bars (Arms)): the whole-history mean, or Fixed Window via Sample Length (default 100).
• Max Lookback (Bars) (default 500): caps the elastic reach; the dashboard's budget fill shows when it binds.
• Comparison SMA (default disabled), SMA Length (default 20): the time-weight benchmark.
• Dashboard and style toggles cover slope coloring, line width, the gradient fill, and crossing markers.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is this different from the elastic volume-weighted MA?

What happens on symbols with no volume feed?

Which SMA length is the fair comparison?