Adaptive Two-Pole Super Smoother Entropy MACD [Loxx]

21 sept 2022

Adaptive Two-Pole Super Smoother Entropy (Math) MACD is an Ehlers Two-Pole Super Smoother that is transformed into an MACD oscillator using entropy mathematics. Signals are generated using Discontinued Signal Lines.

What is Ehlers; Two-Pole Super Smoother?
From "Cycle Analytics for Traders Advanced Technical Trading Concepts" by John F. Ehlers

A SuperSmoother filter is used anytime a moving average of any type would otherwise be used, with the result that the SuperSmoother filter output would have substantially less lag for an equivalent amount of smoothing produced by the moving average. For example, a five-bar SMA has a cutoff period of approximately 10 bars and has two bars of lag. A SuperSmoother filter with a cutoff period of 10 bars has a lag a half bar larger than the two-pole modified Butterworth filter.Therefore, such a SuperSmoother filter has a maximum lag of approximately 1.5 bars and even less lag into the attenuation band of the filter. The differential in lag between moving average and SuperSmoother filter outputs becomes even larger when the cutoff periods are larger.

Market data contain noise, and removal of noise is the reason for using smoothing filters. In fact, market data contain several kinds of noise. I’ll group one kind of noise as systemic, caused by the random events of trades being exercised. A second kind of noise is aliasing noise, caused by the use of sampled data. Aliasing noise is the dominant term in the data for shorter cycle periods.

It is easy to think of market data as being a continuous waveform, but it is not. Using the closing price as representative for that bar constitutes one sample point. It doesn’t matter if you are using an average of the high and low instead of the close, you are still getting one sample per bar. Since sampled data is being used, there are some dSP aspects that must be considered. For example, the shortest analysis period that is possible (without aliasing)2 is a two-bar cycle.This is called the Nyquist frequency, 0.5 cycles per sample.A perfect two-bar sine wave cycle sampled at the peaks becomes a square wave due to sampling. However, sampling at the cycle peaks can- not be guaranteed, and the interference between the sampling frequency and the data frequency creates the aliasing noise.The noise is reduced as the data period is longer. For example, a four-bar cycle means there are four samples per cycle. Because there are more samples, the sampled data are a better replica of the sine wave component. The replica is better yet for an eight-bar data component.The improved fidelity of the sampled data means the aliasing noise is reduced at longer and longer cycle periods.The rate of reduction is 6 dB per octave. My experience is that the systemic noise rarely is more than 10 dB below the level of cyclic information, so that we create two conditions for effective smoothing of aliasing noise:

1. It is difficult to use cycle periods shorter that two octaves below the Nyquist frequency.That is, an eight-bar cycle component has a quantization noise level 12 dB below the noise level at the Nyquist frequency. longer cycle components therefore have a systemic noise level that exceeds the aliasing noise level.

2. A smoothing filter should have sufficient selectivity to reduce aliasing noise below the systemic noise level. Since aliasing noise increases at the rate of 6 dB per octave above a selected filter cutoff frequency and since the SuperSmoother attenuation rate is 12 dB per octave, the Super- Smoother filter is an effective tool to virtually eliminate aliasing noise in the output signal.

What are DSL Discontinued Signal Line?
A lot of indicators are using signal lines in order to determine the trend (or some desired state of the indicator) easier. The idea of the signal line is easy : comparing the value to it's smoothed (slightly lagging) state, the idea of current momentum/state is made.

Discontinued signal line is inheriting that simple signal line idea and it is extending it : instead of having one signal line, more lines depending on the current value of the indicator.

"Signal" line is calculated the following way :

When a certain level is crossed into the desired direction, the EMA of that value is calculated for the desired signal line
When that level is crossed into the opposite direction, the previous "signal" line value is simply "inherited" and it becomes a kind of a level

This way it becomes a combination of signal lines and levels that are trying to combine both the good from both methods.

In simple terms, DSL uses the concept of a signal line and betters it by inheriting the previous signal line's value & makes it a level.

Included:

• Bar coloring
  
• Alerts
  
• Signals
  
• Loxx's Expanded Source Types