Heikin-Ashi volume gates, smoothing, and denominator floors

What the series publishes

The published series is not the raw gated total of signed volume. After signed volume contributions are summed over a lookback and scaled by average volume, a triple exponential average turns that total into a smoothed forecast-style output.

Volume-price analysis adds or subtracts a volume contribution only when a price-structure test and a volume-trend check both pass. The price-structure input is a Heikin-Ashi close, not the raw candle close.

The last-bar open rule

A step-candle is a body-based up or down pattern whose last candle must open inside the prior body. Wicks sit outside that definition. Both the upward and downward versions use the same last-bar test: the final candle must open inside the previous candle body, and wicks are excluded from the test.

In the illustrated step-candle setups, the earliest two sessions are only high-low context. They are not required pattern conditions.

Two step-candle drawings that look alike can still differ on whether the extreme low sits on the last candle or on the candle immediately before it.

The Heikin-Ashi volume gate

Heikin-Ashi supplies a transformed candle close as the bar-to-bar price input. Volume is allowed to enter the oscillator only after that close clears a cutoff-scaled band around the prior Heikin-Ashi close.

The oscillator books a signed volume term only when that band test and a volume-trend confirmation both fire.

The volume average and the smoother

Those signed volume contributions are summed over a lookback, divided by the volume average plus one, then passed through a triple exponential smoother. Exponential smoothing is what makes the published series a smoothed forecast-style output rather than the raw gated total.

The plus-one term is a zero-volume guard. It exists to keep the ratio defined when volume is missing, not because typical large volume averages need a one-unit adjustment.

Layers that can be reduced

Stacking extra smoothers such as a triple exponential average or a linear regression is an optional construction layer that can be reduced.

A lookback net of up-volume minus down-volume is an alternative accumulation-and-dispersion input that does not require reading each print.