Calculate the Ease of Movement (EMV) for a given price series.

The Ease of Movement indicator relates how far price moved (the change in the midpoint of the high-low range from one period to the next) to the volume required to move it (via the “Box Ratio”, volume scaled down and divided by the period’s high-low range). High positive readings mean price is moving up easily on relatively little volume; high negative readings mean price is moving down easily on relatively little volume. The raw daily reading is smoothed with a Simple Moving Average to reduce noise.

The formula is as follows:

\[\text{Distance Moved} = (\operatorname{High}(t) + \operatorname{Low}(t)) / 2 - (\operatorname{High}(t-1) + \operatorname{Low}(t-1)) / 2\] \[\text{Box Ratio} = (\text{Volume} / \text{volume\_divisor}) / (\text{High} - \text{Low})\] \[\text{Raw EMV} = \text{Distance Moved} / \text{Box Ratio}\] \[\text{EMV} = \operatorname{SMA}(\text{Raw EMV},\; \text{window})\]

Also known as: EMV, Ease of Movement.

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Calculate the Ease of Movement (EMV) in Python

The Ease of Movement (EMV) is available in the Technicals module of the open-source Finance Toolkit. Install it with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_ease_of_movement as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Toolkit

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

toolkit.technicals.get_ease_of_movement()

Parameters

get_ease_of_movement accepts the following parameters:

  • period (str, optional): The time period to consider for historical data. Can be “daily”, “weekly”, “quarterly”, or “yearly”. Defaults to “daily”.
  • close_column (str, optional): The column name for closing prices in the historical data. Defaults to “Adj Close”.
  • window (int, optional): Number of periods used to smooth the raw Ease of Movement values with a Simple Moving Average. Defaults to 14.
  • volume_divisor (float, optional): Scaling constant applied to volume so that the Box Ratio (and therefore EMV) stays in a readable range regardless of an asset’s typical share volume. Defaults to 100,000,000.
  • rounding (int | None, optional): The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to 4.
  • growth (bool, optional): Whether to calculate the growth of the Ease of Movement. Defaults to False.
  • lag (int | list[int], optional): The lag to use for the growth calculation.
  • 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. Defaults to 1.
McClellan Oscillator Advancers/Decliners Ratio On-Balance Volume (OBV) Accumulation/Distribution Line (ADL) Chaikin Oscillator TRIN (Arms Index) New Highs - New Lows Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) Positive Volume Index (PVI) Negative Volume Index (NVI)

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

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