TDU Wicked Wave: a momentum wave with filtered entries

Most momentum tools give you one thing: a squiggle that goes up and down. TDU Wicked Wave gives you a state machine. Every bar is classified as bullish, bearish, exhausted, retracing, warning or chop — and only when those states line up does the indicator print an entry marker. Zero crosses for regime change, continuations for pullbacks inside a trend, reversals for exhausted extremes, and a chop zone that tells you plainly when to sit on your hands.

What is the TDU Wicked Wave indicator?

TDU Wicked Wave is a momentum oscillator that has been rebuilt as a decision tool. Under the hood it takes a relative-strength calculation, smooths it, converts it into a directional momentum series, and then smooths that series again over a longer horizon. The result is plotted in a sub-panel as a histogram that waves above and below a zero line, accompanied by two component series — V1 and V2 — and a Signal line that tracks the wave itself.

That much is familiar. What makes the Wicked Wave different is everything layered on top. The histogram is not one colour per side. It is colour-coded into distinct behavioural states so that a single glance tells you whether momentum is fresh, stretched, fading, warning of a turn, or effectively dead. And rather than leaving you to interpret those states, the indicator publishes three separate families of trade markers — Zero cross Long / Zero cross Short, Continuation Long / Continuation Short, and Reversal Long / Reversal Short — each of which requires its own confluence of conditions before it appears on the chart. A twelfth plot, the Zero Line Signal, colours the zero line itself so your directional bias is readable even when you are looking at price and not at the panel.

In practice that changes how you use momentum. You stop asking "is the line up or down?" and start asking "which of the five states am I in, and does this state permit the trade I want to take?" That is the difference between an oscillator and a playbook.

Why most momentum indicators lose money

The classic complaint about MACD, stochastics and raw RSI is not that they are wrong. It is that they are right too often and too early. A momentum line will cross its signal dozens of times in a session, and the vast majority of those crosses happen in the dead middle of the range where there is no move to capture. Traders then bolt on a filter — a moving average, an ADX reading, a time-of-day rule — and end up with a discretionary process that is impossible to test and impossible to execute consistently under pressure.

TDU Wicked Wave attacks the problem in three places at once.

First, the input is double-smoothed. The relative-strength calculation uses RSIPeriod (default 14), then that result is smoothed by RSISmooth (default 5) before the momentum transform is applied, and the momentum output is smoothed again by MomentumSmooth (default 27). Three stages of conditioning means the wave you see is genuinely slow to change its mind. Noise crosses are largely eliminated before they ever reach your eyes.

Second, the amplitude is graded. The ExhaustedThreshold (default 20) draws an invisible boundary. Inside it, momentum is considered healthy and expandable. Beyond it, momentum is considered exhausted — the move has already paid whoever was early, and the risk-reward of chasing has collapsed. The histogram switches to a darker shade the moment that boundary is breached, so you physically cannot confuse an early trend bar with a late one.

Third, there is an explicit do-nothing state. The ChopZoneThreshold (default 5) defines a band around zero where the wave is too small to matter. Bars inside it paint in the neutral ChopZoneColor, and you can instruct the indicator to suppress every alert while that state is active with NoAlertsDuringChopZone. Most indicators have no concept of "nothing is happening." This one does, and it says so loudly.

The colour language: five states you can read in half a second

Learning the Wicked Wave is mostly learning its palette. Once you have internalised the five states, the panel reads like a sentence.

The retracement colour deserves special attention because it is the one traders under-use. A white bar does not mean the trend is over. It means the wave has paused and is giving back some amplitude while price consolidates. In an uptrend, a run of white bars followed by a return to bright green is the single highest-quality repeating pattern the indicator produces — and that is precisely the sequence the Continuation Long marker is designed to catch.

The signal set: three families, three jobs

Zero cross Long and Zero cross Short — regime change

A zero cross is the wave moving from one side of the zero line to the other. Because the underlying series is triple-conditioned, these crosses are relatively rare and relatively meaningful: they mark the point where the balance of buying and selling pressure over your smoothing horizon has genuinely flipped. Zero-cross markers are controlled by ShowZeroCrosses (on by default) and can raise sound alerts via AlertXEnabled.

Use zero crosses as bias-setting events, not scalp triggers. When the wave crosses up, your default stance for the session changes to "buy weakness." When it crosses down, it becomes "sell strength." Some traders take the cross itself as an entry — that works best on higher timeframes and in trending instruments — but the cross earns most of its money by telling you which of the other two signal families you are permitted to trade.

Continuation Long and Continuation Short — the trend pullback

The continuation signal is the workhorse. It requires the wave to be established on one side of zero, to have retraced toward zero without crossing it, and then to re-accelerate in the original direction. In colour terms: green, then white, then green again. That sequence is the definition of a healthy trend absorbing a pullback, and it produces the entries with the tightest natural stops because you are entering just as the pause resolves.

Continuation markers are toggled with ShowContinuation and alerted with AlertCEnabled. If you trade one signal from this indicator and nothing else, trade this one. It has an inherent bias toward trend-following, it keeps you out of the exhausted end of moves, and it repeats many times inside a single directional day.

Reversal Long and Reversal Short — fading exhaustion

Reversal markers only make sense in the context of the exhausted state. The logic is: momentum has pushed past the ExhaustedThreshold, the wave has begun to roll over (often flagged first by the gold warning colour), and the turn is now confirmed enough to publish a marker. This is a counter-trend signal, and you should treat it with the respect counter-trend signals deserve — but because it requires a genuine amplitude extreme first, it does not fire on every wobble the way a bare stochastic cross does.

Reversals are controlled by ShowReversals and alerted with AlertREnabled. They are at their best when the reversal points back toward a higher-timeframe zero-cross bias, and at their most dangerous when they point directly against one. More on that distinction in the playbooks.

The Zero Line Signal and the Signal line

The Zero Line Signal plot colours the zero line itself according to the prevailing directional state, using LongColor, ShortColor and NeutralColor. It is a small feature with a big ergonomic payoff: even if the histogram is compressed at the edge of your screen, the line running through the middle of the panel is green, red or white, and that is enough to keep your bias straight while your eyes are on price. The Signal plot, alongside V1 and V2, exposes the underlying momentum construction for traders who want to see the crossovers and the raw component behaviour rather than relying purely on histogram colour.

How do I read TDU Wicked Wave on the chart?

Read it in four passes. Do them in order, every time, and the panel stops being ambiguous.

Pass one — which side of zero? Above zero means the momentum regime is bullish; below means bearish. Check the colour of the Zero Line Signal to confirm. This single question eliminates half of all bad trades, because most losing trades are counter-regime trades taken because a candle looked exciting.

Pass two — is the wave inside the chop zone? If the bars are silver, the answer to every trade question is no. The market is rotating, the wave has no amplitude, and the expected value of a directional entry is negative after costs. This is the pass that saves your account on Mondays, on half-days, and in the two hours before a major data release.

Pass three — fresh or exhausted? Bright colours mean the move still has room within the amplitude framework the indicator measures. Dark colours mean the move has already travelled. This does not mean the trend is finished — trends can hold an exhausted reading for a long time in a genuine impulse — but it does mean your entry price is now poor relative to where the stop has to go. Exhausted bars are for holding, trailing and taking partials, not for opening risk.

Pass four — is there a marker, and does it agree with passes one to three? A continuation long inside a bullish regime with the wave freshly out of a white retracement is a clean, aligned trade. A reversal short printed while the wave is deep in exhausted-bullish territory is a fade — valid, but smaller size and faster hands. A marker that contradicts your regime read is information about weakening, not necessarily an instruction to trade.

Once that sequence is automatic, the indicator becomes very fast to use. You are not calculating anything; you are pattern-matching against a fixed vocabulary of seven colours and six markers.

Trading playbooks

These are complete setups: context, trigger, entry, stop, target and invalidation. Adapt the numbers to your instrument's volatility — the structure is what matters.

Playbook 1 — The Zero-Cross Launch

Context. The wave has spent time in the chop zone or on the opposite side of zero, and price has built a base or a range. You want the first directional expansion out of balance.

Trigger. A Zero cross Long marker prints and the histogram immediately begins expanding in the bright bullish colour rather than stalling back into the chop band.

Entry. On the close of the signal bar, or on the first minor pullback that holds above the signal bar's low. Patient traders wait for the very first white retracement bar after the cross and buy the return to green, which converts this setup into Playbook 2 with a better price.

Stop. Below the swing low that formed while the wave was still below zero. If the cross was genuine, price should not revisit that low.

Target. First scale as the histogram enters the exhausted shade; trail the remainder using the retracement colour as your permission to hold — as long as white bars resolve back to green, the trend is intact.

Invalidation. The wave crosses back through zero within a few bars, or the histogram collapses straight back into the silver chop band. Both mean the cross was a rotation, not a regime change. Exit and stand down; do not immediately flip.

Playbook 2 — The Continuation Pullback (core setup)

Context. Regime is established: wave clearly on one side of zero, Zero Line Signal in the matching colour, price making higher highs and higher lows (or the mirror image). This is the highest-frequency, highest-quality setup the indicator produces.

Trigger. A run of retracement (white) bars while price consolidates, followed by a Continuation Long marker as the wave turns back up without having crossed zero.

Entry. Market or stop order on the close of the continuation bar. On faster timeframes, use a stop entry one tick above the high of the consolidation to avoid being filled into a failed re-acceleration.

Stop. Below the low of the retracement swing. This is the setup's great advantage — the pullback gives you a structurally defined, genuinely tight invalidation point, which is why the reward-to-risk is usually superior to a zero-cross entry.

Target. Prior swing high first, then hold for the exhausted shade. In strong trends you will get two or three continuation markers in the same direction; each one is an opportunity to add on a smaller unit while trailing the original.

Invalidation. The wave crosses zero rather than turning back up, or the histogram slides into the chop zone. Either kills the trend hypothesis. Take the small loss — this setup fails cheaply, which is the whole point.

Playbook 3 — The Exhaustion Fade

Context. The wave has driven deep past the ExhaustedThreshold and the bars are in the dark shade. Price has often just tagged an obvious level — a session extreme, a Volume Profile value-area edge, a high-volume node from the day before, or a prior swing.

Trigger. The gold warning colour appears as momentum rolls over, then a Reversal Short marker confirms.

Entry. On the close of the reversal bar. Size this smaller than your continuation trades — you are trading against the dominant momentum and you are relying on mean reversion of amplitude, not on a regime flip.

Stop. Above the extreme high that produced the exhausted reading, with a small buffer for the spike. Never widen it.

Target. The zero line. That is it. The natural objective of an exhaustion fade is amplitude returning to neutral, which usually corresponds to price returning to the middle of the recent range or to a value area. Take the majority off there, and only hold a runner if the wave actually crosses zero and converts your fade into a new-regime trend trade.

Invalidation. The histogram re-expands in the dark trend colour after the reversal marker. That is a trend that refuses to cool. Exit immediately — exhausted readings can persist for many bars in a real impulse, and fighting them is how fade traders die.

Playbook 4 — The Chop-Zone Breakout

Context. A long stretch of silver bars. Price is compressed, ranges are narrowing, and everyone who trades signals is being chopped up. You are doing nothing except waiting.

Trigger. The histogram breaks out of the chop band with conviction. Enable ChopZoneBreakoutAlert so the platform tells you rather than you staring at it.

Entry. On the breakout bar close in the breakout direction, ideally confirmed by a zero cross or an immediate continuation marker within the next few bars.

Stop. The opposite side of the compression range in price terms.

Target. Measured move of the compression range, then trail with the retracement rule from Playbook 2.

Invalidation. The wave falls straight back inside the chop band. Compression that fails to expand usually compresses further. One attempt, then wait for a second, cleaner break.

Playbook 5 — Divergence into Reversal

Context. Price makes a new high but the wave's peak amplitude is lower than the previous peak. That is classic momentum divergence, and the Wicked Wave displays it cleanly because the histogram's peak heights are directly comparable.

Trigger. Divergence visible, then the gold warning state, then a Reversal Short marker. All three, in that order.

Entry. Reversal bar close. If you also have a lower high in price structure confirmed by Market Structure, this becomes one of the strongest setups in the whole suite.

Stop. Above the divergent high.

Target. Zero line first, then the prior swing low if the wave crosses and the regime flips.

Invalidation. Price takes out the divergent high with the wave expanding again. Divergence is a warning, never a guarantee; a resolved divergence is just a pause in a trend.

How do I set up TDU Wicked Wave in SabrTrader?

Setup takes under a minute and does not require any scripting.

1. Install the platform. Download the Windows installer, run it, and sign in. The premium library is available on Pro, Ultimate and Lifetime — see pricing for the plan comparison.
2. Open a chart of the instrument you trade — a futures contract, a stock, or a crypto pair such as BTC/USDC as in the screenshots above.
3. Add the indicator. From the indicator list, search for TDU Wicked Wave and add it. It renders in its own sub-panel below price, with the histogram, the zero line, and the V1, V2 and Signal series.
4. Leave the defaults alone for one session. RSIPeriod 14, RSISmooth 5, MomentumSmooth 27, ExhaustedThreshold 20, ChopZoneThreshold 5. These are tuned to be usable across timeframes. Watch how the colours behave on your instrument before you touch anything.
5. Decide about bar painting. PaintBars is off by default. Turn it on and the price bars themselves adopt the wave state colours, which is superb for keeping bias while your attention is on price. Turn it off if you use candle colour for something else.
6. Choose your signals. ShowZeroCrosses, ShowReversals and ShowContinuation are all on by default. If you are learning, switch off everything except continuation for a week. Fewer markers, faster learning.
7. Set alerts. Enable AlertCEnabled, AlertXEnabled and/or AlertREnabled for the families you trade, choose an AlertSound, and consider NoAlertsDuringChopZone plus ChopZoneBreakoutAlert as a pair — silence during rotation, a ping when compression resolves.
8. Save it as a template. Once you like the configuration, save the chart as a template so every new instrument opens with the same wave, the same colours and the same alert behaviour.

Complete settings reference

Calculation engine

Display and signals

Colours

All colour parameters accept full ARGB values, so you can build a light-background palette, a high-contrast accessibility palette, or a muted palette that matches the rest of your workspace. If you trade a four-chart grid, consider desaturating everything except the exhausted and chop colours — those are the two states you must never miss.

Alerts

How do I tune it for my timeframe and market?

The defaults are deliberately broad-spectrum, but the wave responds predictably to tuning. Use this as a starting grid, then adjust one parameter at a time and watch at least twenty signals before judging.

One rule above all: do not tune to eliminate losing signals. That is curve-fitting and it will fail the moment volatility regime changes. Tune to match the rhythm of the instrument — how long its impulses last, how deep its pullbacks go — and accept that any honest momentum tool will produce losers.

Works on every market

The Wicked Wave is a pure price-derived momentum engine. It requires no volume, no bid/ask data, no exchange-specific fields — only bars. That makes it universal across everything SabrTrader can chart.

Because the calculation is bar-based rather than time-based, it also works on tick bars, volume bars, range bars and Renko-style series. Many intraday traders prefer the wave on constant-volume or constant-range bars, where the smoothing operates on a series with far more uniform information content per bar than a time chart provides.

How it compares to free momentum tools

You can plot a MACD anywhere. What you cannot get for free is a graded, filtered, alert-aware state machine with an explicit no-trade regime.

The honest summary: a free oscillator gives you raw momentum and asks you to supply the judgement. The Wicked Wave encodes the judgement — amplitude context, pullback recognition, exhaustion awareness and a do-nothing state — so that what reaches your eyes is already filtered. That is worth far more than another line on the chart.

Combining Wicked Wave with the rest of the suite

Momentum answers when. It does not answer where. The strongest workflows in SabrTrader pair the wave with a location tool and an execution tool.

Wicked Wave plus Volume Profile

Mark your levels with Volume Profile — value-area high and low, point of control, single prints, developing VWAP-style references. Then let the wave time the interaction. Price returning to a value-area edge with the wave printing a continuation marker in the direction of the prevailing regime is a textbook trend-pullback entry. Price rejecting a high-volume node with a reversal marker after an exhausted push is a textbook fade.

Wicked Wave plus Footprint

The wave tells you a signal fired; the Footprint tells you whether real orders back it up. Continuation long marker plus visible absorption of offers and a delta shift in your favour is a high-conviction entry. Continuation long marker plus thinning bids and no aggression is a signal you can pass on. This pairing turns a mechanical marker into a discretionary edge without losing the mechanical discipline.

Wicked Wave plus Market Structure

Market Structure defines swing highs, lows and breaks. Overlay that with the wave and you get an immediate confluence test: does a zero cross coincide with a structural break, or is it happening in the middle of a range? Structural break plus zero cross is a regime change with two independent confirmations. Zero cross with no structural break is often just noise inside balance.

Wicked Wave plus TDU Price Action

TDU Price Action works on candle-level behaviour and pattern context. Using it alongside the wave gives you a two-layer read: bar-level intent from price action, cycle-level intent from momentum. When both agree at a level you have marked with profile data, that is as much confluence as a discretionary trader can reasonably ask for.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Trading every marker. The indicator publishes three families because different traders want different things — not because you should take all of them. Pick one primary family, use the others as context. Most consistently profitable users of a tool like this trade continuations in the direction of the regime and treat reversals purely as exit signals.

Ignoring the chop zone. Silver bars are not an invitation to look harder for a trade. They are a statement that no directional edge exists at your current settings. If you cannot resist, enable NoAlertsDuringChopZone and remove the temptation mechanically.

Entering on exhausted bars. The dark shades exist to stop you buying the top of an impulse. If you feel the urge to chase because the move looks powerful, that is exactly the moment the colour is warning you about. Wait for a retracement and a continuation marker; you will get a better price and a much tighter stop.

Fading against a fresh regime. A reversal marker that appears just after a zero cross in the opposite direction is a low-quality fade — the new regime is young and has room to run. Reversal markets are best when the regime is old and stretched.

Over-tuning. Changing four parameters at once and judging on five signals is not research, it is superstition. Change one, observe twenty signals, then decide.

Using it as a standalone system. The wave has no idea where the value area is, where yesterday's high sits, or when the economic calendar prints. It measures momentum. Give it context and it is excellent; ask it to be everything and it will disappoint you like every other single indicator ever built.

Frequently asked questions