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zeonta.momentum() — Raw price change over n bars.

What it measures

The plainest possible momentum reading: how much has price moved, in its own units, over the last n bars? No smoothing, no normalisation — just today’s close minus the close from n bars back.

Formula

Momentum = Close - Close (n periods ago)

Parameters

Required inputs: close

Parameter Default
length 10

Returns

Column
MOM_10

Usage

Examples run against the 300-bar OHLCV fixture in tests/data/ohlcv.csv, loaded as df. The output shown is the real output.

import pandas as pd
import zeonta

df = pd.read_csv('tests/data/ohlcv.csv', parse_dates=['date']).set_index('date')
zeonta.momentum(df['close'], length=10).tail(3)
date
2024-10-25   -2.2001
2024-10-26   -2.7384
2024-10-27   -2.7623
Name: MOM_10, dtype: float64

Accessor form: df.zta.momentum(...)

How to read it

Above zero means price is higher than it was n bars ago (rising momentum); below zero means it is lower. The line’s own slope — is momentum itself accelerating or fading — is usually more informative than the zero crossing alone.

Pitfalls

Being expressed in raw price units means a Momentum reading of 2 means nothing without knowing the instrument’s price level — never compare it across symbols. Use roc instead when you need a percentage that is comparable across symbols or over a long history where the price level itself has changed a lot.

Reference

Formula source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_(technical_analysis)