What Is the ADX Indicator

A score of push, and two lines of direction

ADX is a score from 0 to 100 of how hard the last fourteen days have been pushing in one direction — whichever direction that is. It comes with two direction lines: +DI, the share of the push that was upward, and −DI, the share that was downward. On 22 April 2025, at the top of gold's rise, ADX read 41 with the green line far above the red. On 18 July, in the summer drift, it read 8 with the two crossed together. The navy line says how hard; the green and red say which way.

The cups and the vane

The picture is a weather station. The spinning cups measure how hard the wind blows and nothing else: they turn just as fast for a north wind as for a south one. The vane beside them says which way it blows, and nothing about how hard. ADX is the cups. A reading of 41 says the days have been pushing hard in one direction; it does not say which. The two DI lines are the vane: green above red means the push has been upward, red above green means downward.

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