Money Flow Index vs Awesome Oscillator
The money flow index runs a momentum calculation on the typical price and weights it by volume, so it is bounded and reports participation. The awesome oscillator subtracts a thirty-four period average of bar midpoints from a five period one, so it is unbounded and reports acceleration.
Most tools in the panel beneath a chart are the same closes rearranged. These two are not: one brings in volume and the other compares two different stretches of time, and neither is a restatement of the other.
What each one is
The money flow index runs a momentum calculation on the typical price — high, low and close averaged — weighted by the volume traded on each bar, bounded from zero to one hundred. The money flow index covers it, and RSI covers the momentum measure it resembles.
The awesome oscillator subtracts a thirty-four period average of bar midpoints from a five period one, drawn as a histogram with no bounds. The awesome oscillator covers the calculation.
Both read the whole bar and neither is close-only. Whereas most oscillators discard the high and the low, both of these keep them, which is the property that makes either worth having in the first place.
Where they differ
What the second dimension is. The money flow index adds participation — how much was traded. The awesome oscillator adds time — how a short stretch compares with a long one. Both are real additions to a plain price reading, and they are different additions.
Whether the scale ends. The money flow index reaches one hundred and stops distinguishing strong from stronger. The histogram keeps widening, so degrees of acceleration remain visible through a trend.
How fragile the input is. Price is price everywhere; volume is not. On spot foreign exchange there is no consolidated tape, so the money flow index inherits one broker’s flow, whereas the awesome oscillator has nothing to inherit and works identically on every instrument.
What each says at a turn. A shrinking histogram inside an intact move is momentum fading before price turns. A money flow index falling off an extreme is participation draining. Those are different statements and either can happen without the other.
Where they agree
Both are misread as reversal signals. A big reading on either means the recent move was strong, and strength is how a trend starts.
Both are computed from bars that have already closed, and neither leads price.
Both fight the same drift. On this site’s shared series 54% of 566 ten-bar windows finished higher than they started.
And both cost a round trip when acted on — 0.0098 here, about 2% of the median bar range of 0.493.
Which one to use
Run the money flow index on listed stocks and futures. Both have a real tape, so the weighting means what it says, and a price move without volume behind it is exactly the thing it exists to flag.
Run the awesome oscillator when volume is unavailable or untrustworthy. It needs nothing but the bars, so it behaves the same on spot foreign exchange as on a listed stock.
Run both when you can, because they genuinely check each other. A move that is accelerating on the histogram and unsupported on money flow is a real disagreement rather than a rounding difference, and that combination is worth more than any two price-only oscillators agreeing.
And when only one of them is extreme, that is the information. Two tools sharing all their inputs cannot produce a meaningful disagreement; these can.
Why two genuine inputs beat three restatements
Because agreement between tools that share their inputs is not evidence. Stack a stochastic, a relative strength index and a williams percent r and they will line up almost always — not because the market is confirming anything, but because they are transformations of the same closes.
And because the case that matters is the thin one. A move on almost no participation may not hold, and that is precisely the situation the price-only tool reports as strength.
The original data
Of the 24,971 unique videos in the search corpus, no title compares these two directly. The awesome oscillator appears in 53 titles at a median of 10,321 views across 44 channels. The money flow index appears in 44, at a median of 3,160 across 36.
Similar coverage, three times the audience on one. The awesome oscillator carries a named-method association that keeps drawing searches; the money flow index is a plain utility with no story attached. That gap is about branding rather than about which measurement is more useful.
On the chart above the disagreement is the reading. Accelerating price without participation behind it is the single most useful thing this pair can tell you, and no combination of price-only oscillators can produce it.
When it fails
The characteristic failure is trusting the volume weighting where volume is not really measured. Spot foreign exchange has no consolidated tape, so the figure your platform shows is one venue’s flow; futures near a roll split their volume across two contracts. In both cases the money flow index produces confident readings from a sample you did not choose, and nothing in the output signals that the input was unreliable. On those instruments the awesome oscillator is the honest tool, whereas on a listed stock the volume weighting is the entire reason to prefer the other.
A second failure is using either as a standalone sell in a trend. The bounded one pins and the unbounded one keeps widening, and neither of those is an exhaustion signal.
A third is reading every histogram colour change as an event. A shorter bar than the last is a description.
A fourth is reading a divergence as a forecast, when most resolve by the indicator catching up.
And a fifth is adding a third price-only oscillator on top, which returns the chart to one opinion in several colours.
Related
The money flow index covers the volume weighting. The awesome oscillator covers the midpoint averages and the histogram. And RSI covers the momentum measure the money flow index is built around.
Almost everything in the panel under a chart is a transformation of the same closes, so stacking three oscillators gives you one opinion in three colours. This pair is one of the few where the two tools are genuinely looking at different things.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.