The Commodity Channel Index (CCI) is a versatile momentum-based oscillator developed by Donald Lambert in 1980. Originally designed for commodity trading, it measures the deviation of price from its statistical mean, normalized by mean absolute deviation.
## Formula
```
TP = (High + Low + Close) / 3
SMA = Simple Moving Average of TP over period
Mean Deviation = SUM(|TP - SMA|) / period
CCI = (TP - SMA) / (0.015 × Mean Deviation)
```
## Key Characteristics
| Property | Value |
|----------|-------|
| Default Period | 20 |
| Lambert Constant | 0.015 |
| Returns | Unbounded oscillator (typically -300 to +300) |
3.**Divergence**: Price making new high/low while CCI fails to confirm
4.**Zero-Line Cross**: Bullish when crossing above, bearish when crossing below
## Lambert Constant (0.015)
The 0.015 constant was chosen by Lambert to ensure that approximately 70-80% of CCI values fall between +100 and -100 under normal market conditions. This provides a statistical framework where:
- Values outside ±100 indicate significant price movement
- Extended readings suggest strong trends
- Extreme values (±200 or beyond) are relatively rare
## Usage
### Basic Construction
```csharp
// Create CCI with default 20-period
varcci=newCci();
// Create CCI with custom period
varcci=newCci(14);
```
### Streaming Updates
```csharp
foreach(varbarinrealTimeData)
{
TValueresult=cci.Update(bar);
doublecciValue=result.Value;
if(cciValue>100)
Console.WriteLine("Overbought territory");
elseif(cciValue<-100)
Console.WriteLine("Oversold territory");
}
```
### Batch Processing
```csharp
TSeriesresults=Cci.Batch(barSeries,period:20);
```
## Comparison with Other Oscillators
| Indicator | Bounds | Best For |
|-----------|--------|----------|
| CCI | Unbounded | Trend strength, divergence |
| RSI | 0-100 | Overbought/oversold levels |
| Stochastic | 0-100 | Price position within range |
## Historical Context
- Developed by Donald Lambert (1980)
- Originally published in *Commodities* magazine
- Early application for identifying cyclical trends in commodities
Each `Update()` call on CCI(N) performs a full O(N) mean-deviation scan over the ring buffer. There is no closed-form running-sum decomposition for mean absolute deviation — the absolute values prevent the cancellation that makes SMA or variance incremental. The RingBuffer manages the sliding window; computing MAD requires visiting every element.
O(N) streaming cost per bar. For the default N = 20: ~107 cycles. No incremental shortcut exists for MAD; SIMD vectorization of the scan loop is the primary optimization lever.
AVX2 processes 4 doubles per instruction. For the inner MAD loop of N=20, that is 5 SIMD passes vs 20 scalar iterations — roughly 3× throughput gain. The outer bar loop remains SIMD-friendly since each bar's TP is independent once the window positions are known.