MedianPrice
Median Price — the bar's
(high + low) / 2, the midpoint of its range.
Quick reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Family | Price Statistics |
| Input type | Candle (uses high, low) |
| Output type | f64 |
| Output range | unbounded (price scale) |
| Default parameters | none (no parameters) |
| Warmup period | 1 |
| Interpretation | The midpoint of the bar's range, ignoring open and close. |
Formula
MedianPrice = (high + low) / 2The median price is the centre of the bar's range — it discards where the bar opened and closed entirely. It is the price series Bill Williams' AwesomeOscillator is built on, and a useful close substitute when the close is noisy relative to the range.
Parameters
MedianPrice takes no parameters — MedianPrice::new() in Rust, wickra.MedianPrice() in Python, new ta.MedianPrice() in Node.
Inputs / Outputs
From crates/wickra-core/src/indicators/median_price.rs:
use wickra::{Indicator, MedianPrice, Candle};
// MedianPrice: Input = Candle, Output = f64
const _: fn(&mut MedianPrice, Candle) -> Option<f64> = <MedianPrice as Indicator>::update;MedianPrice is a candle-input indicator that reads high and low. In Python the streaming update accepts a 6-tuple or a dict; the batch helper takes high, low numpy arrays. Node and WASM expose update(high, low) and the matching batch.
Warmup
MedianPrice::new().warmup_period() == 1. It is a stateless per-bar transform — it emits a value from the very first candle.
Edge cases
- No warmup. Every candle produces a value immediately.
- Reset.
mp.reset()only clears theis_readyflag; there is no rolling state to discard.
Examples
Rust
use wickra::{Candle, Indicator, MedianPrice};
fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
let mut mp = MedianPrice::new();
let v = mp.update(Candle::new(10.0, 12.0, 8.0, 11.0, 1.0, 0)?);
println!("{:?}", v);
Ok(())
}Output:
Some(10.0)(12 + 8) / 2 = 10. This matches the reference_value test in crates/wickra-core/src/indicators/median_price.rs.
Python
import numpy as np
import wickra as ta
mp = ta.MedianPrice()
print(mp.batch(np.array([12.0]), np.array([8.0])))Output:
[10.]Node
const ta = require('wickra');
const mp = new ta.MedianPrice();
console.log(mp.batch([12], [8]));Output:
[ 10 ]Interpretation
The median price is the most range-centric of the three transforms — it is blind to the close. Use it when the question is "where did this bar trade?" rather than "where did it settle?", or as the input to a Bill Williams setup.
Common pitfalls
- Expecting the close to matter. It does not — by definition the median price ignores both the open and the close.
References
The Median Price; the (H + L) / 2 definition is standard (TA-Lib's MEDPRICE).
See also
- Indicator-TypicalPrice —
(H + L + C) / 3. - Indicator-WeightedClose —
(H + L + 2C) / 4. - Indicators-Overview — the full taxonomy.