PPO (Percentage Price Oscillator): MACD you can compare across markets

What it measures

PPO computes the same difference MACD does — a fast exponential average minus a slow one — and then divides by the slow average to express it as a percentage.

That division is the whole point. MACD values depend on the price of the instrument, so a reading of 400 on Bitcoin and 0.4 on a cheap altcoin can describe identical relative momentum. PPO puts both on the same scale.

Everything else about reading it is identical to MACD.

How it is calculated

These are the steps Basis performs, verified against the published definition.

1. 1

   Compute exponential averages of the close over the fast and slow periods.

2. 2

   Subtract the slow average from the fast one.

3. 3

   Divide by the slow average and multiply by one hundred.

4. 4

   The signal line is an exponential average of the PPO series, and the histogram is the difference between them.

Settings

Twelve, twenty-six and nine, inherited from MACD. There is no reason to diverge from MACD settings here unless you are also diverging on MACD, since the entire purpose is comparability — and a PPO computed on non-standard periods is no longer comparable with anyone else’s, which removes most of its advantage.

How to read it

• Zero crossings, signal crossovers and histogram divergence all behave exactly as they do on MACD.
• The advantage appears only when comparing instruments: a PPO of 2.4 means the same thing on any market, and a MACD of 2.4 does not.
• A high PPO on a low-priced instrument is genuinely comparable to a high PPO on a major, which makes it usable as a screener column.
• The histogram carries the same early-warning property as MACD’s: it turns before the lines cross, because it measures the rate at which they are converging.

Where it misleads

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