Calculate the Average True Range (ATR) of a given price series.

The Average True Range (ATR) is a technical indicator that measures the volatility of an asset’s price movements over a specified number of periods. It provides insights into the potential price range of an asset, which can help traders and investors make more informed decisions.

The formula is as follows:

\[\text{TR} = \max(\text{high} - \text{low},\; \operatorname{abs}(\text{high} - \text{previous\_close}),\; \operatorname{abs}(\text{low} - \text{previous\_close}))\] \[\text{ATR} = \text{Wilder's Smoothed Moving Average of TR over} \text{window} \text{periods}\]

Also known as: ATR, volatility indicator. See volatility_model.get_average_true_range for the full formula; Wilder’s smoothing constant (1/window) is slower than a standard EMA’s (2/(window+1)) of the same window.

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Calculate the Average True Range (ATR) in Python

The Average True Range (ATR) is available in the Technicals module of the open-source Finance Toolkit. Install it with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_average_true_range as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Toolkit

toolkit = Toolkit(tickers=["AAPL", "MSFT"])

toolkit.technicals.get_average_true_range()

Which returns:

Date AAPL MSFT Benchmark
2026-06-18 8.1636 12.5379 11.0343
2026-06-22 8.065 12.4293 11.1386
2026-06-23 7.945 11.7 11.7414
2026-06-24 7.85 11.4886 11.9636
2026-06-25 8.9529 11.9543 12.1729
2026-06-26 9.2186 12.5764 12.0579
2026-06-29 8.6679 13.4336 12.3993
2026-06-30 8.345 12.9479 11.1721
2026-07-01 8.3464 13.5143 10.7443
2026-07-02 8.9414 13.1671 10.4364

Parameters

get_average_true_range accepts the following parameters:

  • period (str): Period for which to calculate the ATR.
  • window (int): Number of periods for ATR calculation. The number of periods (time intervals) over which to calculate the Average True Range.
  • rounding (int | None): Number of decimal places to round the resulting ATR values to. If None, no rounding is performed.
  • growth (bool): Flag indicating whether to return the ATR growth rate. If True, the ATR growth rate is calculated.
  • lag (int | list[int]): Number of periods to lag the ATR values by. If an integer is provided, all ATR values are lagged by the same number of periods. If a list of integers is provided, each ATR value is lagged by the corresponding number of periods.
  • standardize (bool, optional): Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False.
True Range (TR) Keltners Channels Bollinger Bands Donchian Channels Volatility Cone Supertrend

The Technicals module page introduces the module, and the sidebar lists all of its functions.

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