Awesome Oscillator (AO)
Calculate the Awesome Oscillator (AO) for a given price series.
The Awesome Oscillator measures market momentum by comparing a short-term and a long-term Simple Moving Average of the median price (the midpoint of each period’s high and low, rather than the closing price). It was developed by Bill Williams as part of his broader “Trading Chaos” collection of momentum indicators.
The formula is as follows:
\[\text{Median Price} = (\text{High} + \text{Low}) / 2\] \[\text{AO} = \operatorname{SMA}(\text{Median Price},\; \text{short\_window}) - \operatorname{SMA}(\text{Median Price},\; \text{long\_window})\]Also known as: AO, Bill Williams Awesome Oscillator.
Awesome Oscillator (AO) in Python or via the MCP
Install the Finance Toolkit with:
pip install financetoolkit -U
Then call get_awesome_oscillator as shown below.
from financetoolkit import Toolkit
toolkit = Toolkit(
tickers=["SOLUSD"],
api_key="FINANCIAL_MODELING_PREP_KEY",
start_date="2021-01-01",
end_date="2025-12-31",
)
toolkit.technicals.get_awesome_oscillator().tail(5)
Or, after setting up the Finance Toolkit MCP, ask:
How did the momentum of Solana shift from 27 to 31 December 2025, measured by the Awesome Oscillator?
Which returns:
| Date | SOLUSD | Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-12-27 | -8.9048 | 8.1464 |
| 2025-12-28 | -8.6621 | 7.9295 |
| 2025-12-29 | -7.5992 | 7.0338 |
| 2025-12-30 | -6.6618 | 6.2715 |
| 2025-12-31 | -5.546 | 4.9234 |
Parameters
get_awesome_oscillator accepts the following parameters.
| Parameter | Type | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
period | str | The time period to consider for historical data. Can be “intraday”, “daily”, “weekly”, “monthly”, “quarterly” or “yearly”. Defaults to “daily”. | "weekly" |
close_column | str | The column name for closing prices in the historical data. Defaults to “Adj Close”. | "Close" |
short_window | int | The number of periods for the short-term SMA of the median price. Defaults to 5. | 3 |
long_window | int | The number of periods for the long-term SMA of the median price. Defaults to 34. | 21 |
rounding | int | None | The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to None, which uses the rounding of the Toolkit (4 unless set otherwise). | 2 |
growth | bool | Whether to calculate the growth of the AO. Defaults to False. | True |
lag | int | list[int] | The lag to use for the growth calculation. Defaults to 1. | 4 |
standardize | bool | 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 |