ATR From Scratch

Hi, traders!

The volatility is one of the most important market indicator that could describe the instrument’s behavior. That’s why it’s deadly impossible to use it to predict the further price movements. But what is volatility? It’s the measure of price changing. The more volatility is, the more you can earn or lose, the price is prone to change. So, dear subscribers today we’ll speak about Average True Range (ATR), one of the most powerful indictors of volatility.

Well, from the very beginning, let’s speak about True Range (TR) and understand how to calculate it. True range is maximum of pairwise absolute difference between high and low, open and close, maximum and minimum.
TR=MAX(|high-low|,|high-close|,|low-close|)
So, it shows us how much the instrument’s price has changed during the one bar. It’s Whereas the Average True Range is Average of TR during some period.
ATR=sum(TRs of period)/length of period
It’s considered to be rather informative, but it’s kinda difficult to make any decisions. For example, is you see on the chart above we have two coins: MAKER and Bitcoin. The definition of ATR of the first is bigger sometimes, but the real volatility (price change) of the second is much higher. Thus, we would advise you to use ATR Normalized, cause you can make it in percentage scale and considering any period you like to make it more representative and smart.

The ATR may be used by market technicians to enter and exit trades, and is a useful tool to add to a trading system. It was created to allow traders to more accurately measure the daily volatility of an asset by using simple calculations. The indicator does not indicate the price direction; rather it is used primarily to measure volatility caused by limit up or down moves. The ATR is fairly simple to calculate and only needs historical price data.
The ATR is commonly used as an exit method that can be applied no matter how the entry decision is made. One popular technique is known as the "chandelier exit". The chandelier exit places a trailing stop under the highest high the stock reached since you entered the trade. The distance between the highest high and the stop level is defined as some multiple times the ATR. 2 For example, we can subtract three times the value of the ATR from the highest high since we entered the trade. Also it can be used as the tool that can help you to choose tokens that suits your strategy.

DISCLAMER: Information is provided only for educational purposes. Do your own study before taking any actions or decisions at the real market.