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Technical Indicators

Fri, Jun 6th, 2025
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The descriptions, formulas, and parameters shown below apply to both Interactive Charts and Snapshot Charts, unless noted. Please note that some of the parameters may be slightly different between the two versions of charts.
Studies noted with * are available only in Snapshot Charts and those noted with ^ are available only in Interactive Charts.
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Weighted Alpha

Indicator Type: Stand-alone

Chart Type: Interactive Charts Only

Period: Intraday, Daily, Weekly, and Monthly

Barchart's Weighted Alpha indicator is a measure of how much a stock has risen or fallen over the past 250 trading periods, allowing traders to quickly spot stocks or sectors that have shown a strong rally over the past series of months and which may continue to rally.

In the most simplistic terms the Weighted Alpha is similar to a 1-year percent change, but in reality the Weighted Alpha is a lot more nuanced than that. The Weighted Alpha takes the input data and combines these into different trading periods, then assigns a weighting to each trading period, with a lesser weighting applied to the oldest period, and a higher weighting applied to the most recent period. Barchart then calculates a modified percent change for each trading period, with a cap on how much any specific period can effect the total result, thus eliminating large price jumps from the calculation. The Weighted Alpha is the sum of the totals of the weightings multiplied by the modified percent change, for each trading period.

A stock whose has a positive weighted alpha will most likely have seen a price increase over the past several months. A stock whose price has not changed in the period will have a small Weighted Alpha either positive or negative, and a stock whose price has dropped over the most recent period will have a negative Weighted Alpha.

The Weighting dictates that more recent price changes will have a greater effect on the result that similar price changes from earlier periods, thus giving precedence to more recent price activity. The use of combining data into different trading periods helps smooth out the input data, so that one price move alone is often not enough to move the needle. And the capping of the ability of any specific trading period to effect the end results, helps eliminate sharp moves from distorting the results, creating a smoother indicator.

Barchart considers the Weighted Alpha as the single most important indicator we have, and this is reflected in the use of the Weighted Alpha as the ranking indicator within the Top 100 Stocks page.

Note: The Weighted Alpha is limited in the amount it may change from one day to the next, thus eliminating large price jumps from the calculation.

Sample Chart:

Weighted Alpha

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