The Futures Price Surprises page lists the strongest futures contracts, ranked by Weighted Alpha (strength of trend) over the past 1-year. The page is re-ranked every 10 minutes, and new contracts may be added to or removed from the bullish and bearish tables based on newly calculated data.
Bullish Trends
A Bullish trend is one where there is an upward trend or rising direction in the market. On the Futures Price Surprises page, contracts listed on the Bullish Trends table are those whose Weighted Alpha has risen over the specified time period.
Bearish Trends
A Bearish trend is one where there is an downward trend or falling direction in the market. On the Futures Price Surprises page, contracts listed on the Bearish Trends table are those whose Weighted Alpha has fallen over the specified time period.
Views
The page contain four standard views, and Flipcharts are available for the symbols listed on the page. My Barchart members also have the option to display the data using any Custom View you've created, and the data can be downloaded to Excel.Â
The Chart View displays a graph showing Bullish Momentum as green bars (highest Weighted Alpha), followed by Bearish Momentum as red bars (lowest Weighted Alpha). Click on any Commodity Name to view the quote for that commodity.
About Weighted Alpha
Barchart's "Weighted Alpha" indicator allows traders to quickly spot commodities that have shown a strong rally over the past 1-year and which may continue to rally.
Alpha is a measure of how much a contract has risen or fallen over a 1-year period. Barchart.com takes this Alpha (i.e., the measure of how much a contract has changed in the 1-year period) and weights this, assigning more weight to recent activity, and less (0.5 factor) to activity at the beginning of the period. Thus the weighted alpha is a measure of 1-year growth with an emphasis on the most recent price activity.
A futures contract whose price has risen over the 1-year period will have a positive Weighted Alpha. A futures contract whose price has not changed in the period will have a small Weighted Alpha and a futures contract whose price has dropped over the period will have a negative Weighted Alpha.
The Weighted Alpha is limited in the amount it may change from one day to the next, thus eliminating large price jumps from the calculation.
