Hi Cockeye, thanks I'll look into that.

I was thinking though that it wold be useful to analyze just the price movement within the bar, instead of a moving window as you mentioned.

The reason being is that the moving window would probably be smoother.

I'm thinking that by studying only data within a bar, you would see changes in "volatility" faster. Basically what I'm looking for is to see the battle between the bulls and bears, or absence thereof.

If it is "efficient" price movement as you mentioned... i.e. if it goes up or down more or less in a straight line then there is little resistance to price movement for that bar.

by using only data within the bar you would see rapid changes in this value. And so plotting this indicator on the higher time frame (e.g. M30) would let you see patterns develop quickly.

perhaps though the data might not be meaningful until most of the bar has been completed... but that kind of thing is easy to get around, just return 0 until we have enough lower time frame bars to make a calculation.

But this is all just guess work because I'm still only about 1 month into my learning about forex experience. So please feel free to point out the holes in my logic.