GlossaryBy Sverre MoeUpdated 2026-07-21
What is the McClellan Oscillator?
What is the McClellan Oscillator?
The McClellan Oscillator is a breadth-momentum gauge built from two exponential moving averages of ratio-adjusted net advances, or RANA: the day's advancing issues minus declining issues, divided by advancing plus declining issues, then scaled by 1,000 so the number stays readable as the total count of traded issues changes over decades. The oscillator itself is EMA-19 of RANA minus EMA-39 of RANA, a faster average net against a slower one, the same construction as a MACD but built on breadth instead of price.
Readings above zero mean breadth is accelerating; below zero, it is deteriorating. Plus-or-minus 50 are the conventional extreme oversold and overbought thresholds. It is a momentum read on participation, not a level: a market can have broad participation (a high percent-above-50-day reading) while McClellan is falling, which just means that participation is losing steam session over session, not that it has collapsed yet.
How tickerstance uses McClellan
McClellan carries a 10% weight inside the Breadth subscore, trimmed down from an earlier 15% to make room for the up/down volume ratio, which reads same-day conviction that McClellan's smoothing partly obscures. Its cumulative running sum, McClellan Summation, is tracked separately as its own Pro /data tile for readers who want the slower, more structural version of the same series.
As of the July 20, 2026 close, the McClellan Oscillator read -29 (Neutral band) and McClellan Summation read -54 (also Neutral): short-term breadth momentum was deteriorating that session, though not yet at an extreme in either the oscillator or its cumulative sum. See the advance/decline line essay for how McClellan compares with the raw A/D ratio and A/D line as three different views of the same underlying data.
Related
- Breadth
The subscore McClellan feeds, and its full signal weighting.
- Zweig Breadth Thrust
A rarer, more extreme breadth-thrust signal tracked alongside McClellan.
- Advance/Decline Line
How McClellan compares with the raw A/D ratio and cumulative A/D line.