Price Indicators

What are Price Indicators?

Price indicators take the four values that define each candle -- Open, High, Low, Close -- and combine them into a single representative price. Each indicator uses a different formula to weight these values, producing a slightly different "average" price for the candle.

Most traders never use these indicators directly as chart overlays or trading signals. Their primary purpose is as building blocks for other indicators. For example, CCI uses Typical Price internally, and many volume-weighted calculations rely on one of these price transforms. Understanding what they are helps you understand the indicators built on top of them.

Single-Candle Price Transforms

These four indicators compute a value from a single candle's OHLC data. They require no lookback period and produce one output value per candle.

AVGPRICE (Average Price)

The simple average of all four prices. Every value gets equal weight. This gives you the "center of mass" of the candle, accounting for where it opened, how far it stretched in each direction, and where it closed.

MEDPRICE (Median Price)

The midpoint of the candle's range. Ignores the open and close entirely -- only cares about the extremes. This tells you the center of the candle's territory without any bias toward where it opened or closed.

TYPPRICE (Typical Price)

The average of the high, low, and close. Compared to MEDPRICE, it gives some weight to the closing price. Compared to AVGPRICE, it excludes the open. Typical Price is the most commonly referenced price transform because it is used internally by CCI and several volume indicators.

WCLPRICE (Weighted Close Price)

Similar to AVGPRICE but replaces the open with a second copy of the close. This gives the closing price twice the weight of the high and low, reflecting the idea that the close is the most important price of the candle (it is where the market settled and where the next candle opens in continuous markets).

Multi-Candle Midpoint Indicators

These two indicators look across multiple candles to find the midpoint of a range. They require a lookback period parameter.

MIDPOINT

Finds the highest and lowest closing prices over the last N candles and returns their midpoint. This is a measure of the center of the closing price range -- not the same as a moving average, which averages all closing prices. MIDPOINT only uses the two extreme values.

MIDPRICE

Similar to MIDPOINT but uses the highest high and lowest low instead of closing prices. This gives the center of the full price range over N candles, including wicks and shadows. MIDPRICE is based on the full high-low span, which is always at least as wide as the close-only span MIDPOINT uses, because highs are always >= closes and lows are always <= closes.

Reference Table

When to Use These

In most cases, you will not add these to your chart as standalone indicators. Their value is primarily as components of other indicators. If you see "Typical Price" mentioned in the documentation for CCI or a volume indicator, this page tells you exactly what that means.

That said, MIDPOINT and MIDPRICE can serve as simple support/resistance references -- they show the center of the recent price range, which some traders use as a rough equilibrium level. If the price is above the MIDPRICE, it is in the upper half of its recent range. If below, it is in the lower half.

Where to Go Next

CCI (Commodity Channel Index) -- uses Typical Price as its input.

Moving Averages -- a different approach to smoothing price data over time.

Volatility Indicators -- Bollinger Bands and ATR, which also transform OHLC data but measure dispersion rather than central tendency.