Relative Vigor Index Tested: It Crossed Its Signal Line 50 Times a Day on EURUSD M5, and 1 of 16 Runs Passed

The Relative Vigor Index was published by John Ehlers in 2002. The idea is old trader lore: in a rising market bars tend to close higher than they open, in a falling market lower. The RVI turns that into a number between roughly -1 and +1 and adds a signal line, so it looks and is read much like Stochastic. MetaTrader 4 and 5 ship it under Indicators, Oscillators, Relative Vigor Index, with one input: the period, 10 by default.

Most guides say “buy when the green line crosses above the red line” and stop there. That is easy to count, so I counted it, plus three common variations, on real bars with one fixed exit.

How is the RVI calculated?

Because the signal line is just the RVI three bars smoothed, the two lines sit very close together and cross often. That is the root of most of what follows. The head-to-head with the oscillator it looks most like is in RVI vs Stochastic.

How was it tested?

• Data: EURUSD M5 from June 3 to August 26, 2026, 16,926 bars; gold M5 from June 16 to August 26, 13,736 bars. M15 built from the same bars.
• Four rules: the signal-line cross (buy when RVI crosses above the signal line, sell on the cross below); the same, only on the EMA 200 side; the zero cross; and the signal-line cross only when RVI is in its outer 20%, a buy cross below the threshold and a sell cross above it. The threshold was set from the first half of the data only (0.37 on EURUSD M5, 0.28 on EURUSD M15, 0.22 and 0.23 on gold), so the second half was not peeked at.
• Exit and pass: stop 1.5 ATR, target 3 ATR, 48 bars at most, one trade at a time, the same exit as in the forex indicators list, ranked. Cost 1 pip on EURUSD and $0.30 an ounce on gold, from spread and swap costs in MT4. A run passes if it makes money after cost, in both halves (split July 15), and beats the 95th percentile of 200 random-entry runs with the same exit, as in algorithmic rule vs random entry.

How noisy is the RVI on short charts?

The number that stands out is the median run of 4 bars, the same on every chart and timeframe. The RVI and its signal line swap places every 20 minutes on M5 and every hour on M15, whatever the market does. On EURUSD M5 only 44% of crosses came on a bar of the signal’s own colour, a buy on a green bar or a sell on a red one, because the 4-bar smoothing reacts to bars that have already passed. Gold bars were more decisive, and the cross matched the bar’s colour 61% of the time.

The last row is the one that matters for trading. On none of the 4 charts did price follow a cross more often than not. The same coin-flip pattern turned up in DeMarker indicator tested and Momentum indicator tested.

Did any RVI rule make money?

Trades in brackets. 11 of 16 runs lost after cost. On EURUSD M5 the plain cross lost 1.07 pips a trade, slightly worse than random entries with the same exit: before the 1-pip spread it was -0.07, so the signal added nothing and the spread did the rest.

The outer-20% cross on EURUSD M15 is the one run that passed. It made +0.21 pips a trade in the first half and +0.38 in the second, won 42% of trades with a 2-to-1 target, and beat the +0.14 that the best 5% of random runs reached. That is a real result on this data, but a small one: +37 pips over 126 trades and three months. With 16 runs and a 5% bar, about one pass is expected by chance, and the same rule lost 0.70 pips a trade on EURUSD M5. 1 of 16 passed.

Gold M15 looks better at first: all four rules made money, and three were positive in both halves. But random entries on gold M15 had a very wide spread, from losing $2.50 to making $2.05 or more, because gold trended strongly in this sample. The zero cross made $1.17 an ounce a trade and still fell short of the $2.93 the luckiest 5% of random runs reached with the same number of trades.

Why does the extreme-zone cross do better?

Taking only the crosses that happen far from zero throws away about 85% of the signals, the ones in the middle where the lines just wobble around each other. What is left is a turn after a run of strong closes in one direction, the same idea as a Stochastic cross in the 80 or 20 zone. On EURUSD M15 that cut the trades from 346 to 126 and moved the result from -0.68 to +0.30 pips. On the other three charts it helped on EURUSD M5 (-1.07 to -0.70) and gold M5 (-1.01 to -0.86) but still lost, and on gold M15 it cut the gain from $0.64 to $0.35, so it is a better filter, not a fix.

The EMA 200 filter cut the trades by about a fifth and lost more on EURUSD M15. On 5-minute bars the EMA 200 covers less than a day and flips several times a week, as it did in Elder-Ray tested.

What would I do with the RVI?

• Do not trade every green-red cross. At 50 a day on EURUSD M5 they are mostly noise, and they lost more than the spread.
• If you use it, use only crosses far from zero, and on M15 or higher. That was the only rule that passed, on one chart; test it on your own symbol before trusting it.
• It moves with Stochastic. RVI and Stochastic %K 14 correlated at 0.67 to 0.85, and Stochastic usually crossed first; see RVI vs Stochastic.
• A longer period does not rescue EURUSD M5. 21 settings per chart are in RVI settings for MT4, and on EURUSD none made money.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Relative Vigor Index?

An oscillator by John Ehlers that divides the smoothed close-minus-open by the smoothed high-minus-low over 10 bars, with a signal line on top. Positive means closes have been beating opens.

How do you trade the RVI?

The common rule buys when the RVI line crosses above its signal line and sells on the cross below. In this test that lost after cost on 3 of 4 charts. Only the cross taken far from zero passed, on EURUSD M15.

What are good RVI levels?

There are no fixed overbought and oversold levels. In this test the outer 20% of readings started at 0.37 on EURUSD M5, 0.28 on EURUSD M15 and about 0.22 on gold, so check the range on your own chart first.

Is the RVI good for scalping?

Not on its own here. On EURUSD M5 every RVI rule lost 0.70 to 1.12 pips a trade after a 1-pip spread, and the plain cross fired 50 times a trading day.

Does the RVI repaint?

No. It uses closed open, high, low and close prices. The value on the current bar changes until the bar closes, so all signals here were taken on closed bars.