An oscillator that subtracts the trend component from price and exposes only the underlying cyclic component. It is not plotted at the current bar — it is an instrument for reading past cycles, not for generating real-time signals.
The Detrended Price Oscillator (DPO) is designed to remove the trend component from price and isolate the cyclic component that remains. A moving average stands in for the trend; subtracting it from price reveals how much the price has been swinging around that trend over time.
The defining feature is that the moving average is displaced backward — shifted into the past by (n/2 + 1) bars — before being subtracted from price. As a result, the DPO is not plotted at the current bar; its most recent values are positioned in the past.
This is a feature, not a bug. DPO was never meant to generate "buy now" signals at the current bar. It is built to describe the period and amplitude of past cycles — a tool for understanding the rhythm of a market, not for triggering trades at its leading edge.
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