On this page
Williams %R — Momentum, in its own panel below the chart.
What Williams %R measures
The value is the highest high minus the close, divided by the distance between the highest high and the lowest low, multiplied by -100. It is the mirror image of the raw fast stochastic line, measured from the top of the range instead of from the bottom, and it carries no smoothing of any kind: what you see is the position of each individual close. The output is bounded to the interval between -100 and 0 by construction. When the window is flat, with the highest high equal to the lowest low, the bar returns no value rather than a default, the same rule the stochastic follows.
The formula, as implemented
This is not how the indicator is usually defined elsewhere — it is what the shipped code computes, documented next to the implementation:
Williams %R (Williams) : −100·(HH_N − close)/(HH_N − LL_N), borné [−100, 0]. Fenêtre plate (HH == LL) → null (même règle que le stochastique, dont il est le miroir). Défaut N=14.
How to read it
- A reading near 0 means the bar closed at or very near the highest price of the last fourteen bars. Near -100 means the opposite.
- The -50 level marks a close in the middle of the window, which says the last fourteen bars have not resolved in either direction.
- Because nothing is smoothed, a single bar that closes on its extreme sends the line straight to a bound. Compare it with the bar itself before treating the move as meaningful.
- In a sustained trend the line stays compressed against one bound; it leaves that zone when a close finally prints away from the extreme, which can be well after the move has slowed.
- A gap in the line indicates a window with no range, not a reading at the bottom of the scale.
Parameters and defaults
The period defaults to 14 and accepts 1 to 200. A short period such as 5 reaches both bounds constantly, since only a handful of bars define the range. A longer period makes the range wider and the extremes rarer, but also slower to reach and slower to leave. The colour setting affects the drawing only.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Period | number | 14 | 1 – 200 |
What it does not show
The scale is entirely relative to its own window: a new high always reads close to 0, whether the move that produced it was one tick or forty. The absence of smoothing makes the line noisy compared with the slow stochastic, which is a deliberate difference, not a defect. During quiet hours or on thinly traded instruments the window high and low can be set by very few trades, so the denominator rests on little activity. A close on the window high also says nothing about whether that level was accepted or rejected; that reading comes from what actually traded there, not from this ratio.
Related indicators
This page in other languages
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between Williams %R and the stochastic oscillator?
- They measure the same thing from opposite ends. Williams %R measures the distance from the window high down to the close, on a -100 to 0 scale, while the stochastic measures the distance from the window low up to the close, on a 0 to 100 scale. The version here also applies no smoothing, whereas the slow stochastic smooths twice.
- What does a Williams %R of -100 mean?
- It means the bar closed exactly at the lowest low of the lookback window. It is a statement about the position of that close within the last fourteen bars, not about how far price has fallen in absolute terms, and the value can sit at -100 for consecutive bars during a decline.
- Can Williams %R be positive?
- No. The formula divides a non-negative distance by the full window range and multiplies by -100, so the result is always between -100 and 0. A value of exactly 0 means the close equals the highest high of the window.