Williams %R: the inverted range reading

Williams %R runs from −100 to 0. A reading of 0 means the close is at the very top of the recent 14-day range; −100 means it is at the very bottom. The inverted scale trips people up constantly, so it is worth restating: closer to zero is stronger recent price position, not weaker.

Overbought is therefore the region near the top of the scale — conventionally −20 and above — and oversold is −80 and below.

Both indicators compute position within the same high-low window over the same default lookback. Plot them together and the shapes are near-mirrored. This is not a coincidence or a flaw; they are two presentations of one measurement.

The practical consequence for any scoring system is that treating them as two independent votes overstates the evidence. Two indicators agreeing means much less when they are computing the same thing.

It would be defensible to drop Williams %R entirely. It is kept here because it is widely watched and readers expect to see it, and because the small differences in smoothing occasionally surface a stretched reading slightly earlier than stochastic.

The honest handling is to keep it at a reduced weight, which is what the momentum weighting does.