ATR (Wilder) Indicator: Formula, Settings and How to Read It
ATR (Average True Range) measures how much an instrument moves per bar, in the price units of that instrument, by averaging the true range of each bar with Wilder's smoothing. It is plotted in a separate pane because its scale is a distance, not a price level.
Senzoukria · Indicators · Updated September 2026
ATR (Wilder) ships with the Senzoukria desktop app, in the Averages & volatility group of the indicator catalogue. It is drawn in its own panel below the chart.
What ATR (Wilder) measures
True range for a bar is the largest of three distances: the bar's own high minus its low, the absolute difference between the high and the previous close, and the absolute difference between the low and the previous close. Bringing the previous close into the comparison is what makes a gap count as movement instead of being hidden behind a small high-low range. The first bar has no previous close, so its true range is simply high minus low. The series is seeded with the plain average of the first N true ranges, then updated with Wilder's recursion ATR = (previous ATR x (N - 1) + TR) / N, and it stays empty until N bars exist.
How to read it
- ATR is a size, not a direction: a rising value says bars are getting larger, whether price is going up or down.
- A reading only means something next to the same instrument's own recent history; 12 points of ATR says nothing until you know what this contract usually does.
- A collapse in the value describes a compression in bar size, and says nothing about which way the next expansion goes.
- Traders commonly use it as a unit of distance, for instance to express a stop in multiples of ATR; it remains an average of past bars, not a forecast of the next one.
- A jump at a session open or after a gap often reflects that single true range entering the average rather than a change of regime.
Parameters and defaults
The only calculation parameter is the period, default 14, the value Wilder published in 1978, and it accepts 1 to 200. A short period reacts to one large bar almost immediately and decays fast. A long one produces a stable level that keeps the memory of an old spike for many bars, because Wilder's smoothing never drops a value out of a window, it only dilutes it.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Period | number | 14 | 1 – 200 |
What it does not show
ATR has no sign and no direction, so it cannot separate a fast rally from a fast selloff. The same value can come from steady two-way movement or from one violent bar in an otherwise quiet window. Its scale is tied to the timeframe and to the contract's tick size, which makes readings incomparable between instruments and between chart intervals. And because true range reaches back to the previous close, a missing bar in the feed inflates one reading, then keeps it in the average for a long time.
Using it in Senzoukria
Add it from the Indicators panel of any footprint chart or candle chart. It runs on futures data from Rithmic or Databento and on crypto pairs from Binance and Bybit, on the same engine — the calculation does not change with the venue, only the data feeding it does. Market data subscriptions are billed by the provider, separately from the app.
Related indicators
- SMA — Averages & volatility
- EMA — Averages & volatility
- WMA — Averages & volatility
- Hull MA — Averages & volatility
- Bollinger — Averages & volatility
- Keltner — Averages & volatility
See the full indicator library, or start with the order flow guide if you are new to reading aggression, delta and absorption.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between true range and high minus low?
- High minus low only covers movement that happened inside the bar. True range also compares the high and the low with the previous close, so a gap between two bars is counted as distance travelled. When there is no gap, the two measures are identical.
- Why does ATR use 14 periods by default?
- Fourteen is the period Wilder published with the indicator in 1978, and it has remained the common default across charting platforms. It is a convention rather than an optimum, and the period can be set anywhere from 1 to 200 here.
- Can ATR tell me if volatility is high or low?
- Only relative to the same instrument on the same timeframe. ATR is expressed in the price units of the contract, so a reading is meaningful compared with that contract's own past readings and meaningless compared with another symbol or another chart interval.