The Cybernetic Oscillator

Oscillator-type indicators swing around the zero line. They are often used for opening positions when oscillator exceeds a positive or negative threshold. In his article series about no-lag indicators, John Ehlers presents in the TASC June issue the Cybernetic Oscillator. It is built by applying a highpass and afterwards a lowpass filter to the price curve, then normalizing the result.

We already know Ehlers’ highpass filter from previous articles. It’s in the Zorro indicator library under the name HighPass3. The lowpass filter, Ehlers’ ‘SuperSmoother’, is also in the library, as well as the Sum of Sqares function for normalizing. This makes the Cybernetic Oscillator easy to code in C:

var CyberOsc(vars Data,int HPLength,int LPLength)
{
  vars HP = series(HighPass3(Data,HPLength));
  vars LP = series(Smooth(HP,LPLength));
  var RMS = sqrt(SumSq(LP,100)/100);
  return LP[0]/fix0(RMS);
}

We apply two Cybernetic Oscillators, one with a short and one with a long highpass cutoff, to an S&P500 chart from 2024:

void run()
{
  BarPeriod = 1440;
  LookBack = 250;
  StartDate = 20240301;
  EndDate = 20250407;
  asset("SPX500");
  plot("CyberOsc1",CyberOsc(seriesC(),30,20),NEW|LINE,RED);
  plot("CyberOsc2",CyberOsc(seriesC(),250,20),NEW|LINE,BLUE);
}

The resulting chart replicates Ehler’s chart in the article. The red line reproduces the swings of the price curve, the blue line the long-term trend:

Now we test the Cybernetic Oscillator by using it for a swing trading system. We open positions in the direction of the trend. The code, replicated from Ehlers’ EasyLanguage script:

void run()
{
  BarPeriod = 1440;
  LookBack = 250;
  StartDate = 2009;
  EndDate = 2025;
  Fill = 2; // enter at next open
  assetList("AssetsIB"); // simulate IBKR
  asset("SPY");
  vars LP = series(Smooth(seriesC(),20));
  vars BP1 = series(HighPass3(LP,55));
  var ROC1 = BP1[0] - BP1[2];
  vars BP2 = series(HighPass3(LP,156));
  var ROC2 = BP2[0] - BP2[2];

  if(!NumOpenLong && ROC1 > 0 && ROC2 > 0)
    enterLong();
  if(NumOpenLong && (ROC1 < 0 || ROC2 < 0))
    exitLong();
}

The system is opening a 1-share SPY position without reinvestment. We’re using commission, leverage and other trading parameters from a popular US broker for the simulation. Ehlers had produced his filter parameters with in-sample optimization, so take the result with a grain of salt. This is the equity curve:

Backtesting the same system with walk-forward optimization, for getting a more accurate result, is left as an exercise to the reader. Hint: you need to enter 4 extra lines. Ehlers’ system generates about 180 trades with 60% win rate and profit factor 2. The code can be downloaded from the 2025 script repository on https://financial-hacker.com.