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?

The Elastic Volume-weighted MA folds volume into a recursive update of a single running value, while Arms' construction spends a fixed volume budget over a variable window. Both measure business done rather than clock time; the stretching lookback is the Arms signature.

What happens on symbols with no volume feed?

Every bar counts as exactly one increment and the line degrades to a time-weighted window — it just loses the elastic behavior.

Which SMA length is the fair comparison?

Matching the budget (20) compares like for like in increment terms; with the 0.67 factor that budget spans roughly 13 bars on steady volume, so a 13-bar SMA is the speed-matched choice.