This is the popular Woodies CCI indicator, which was made popular by ken wood (25+ years trading experience) founder of the Woodie CCI club which is a large community of traders. There's actually a full system behind this indicator which I have personal never tried but a Google search will present a lot of information on the topic.
This indicator is just a modified version of the original CCI indicator. The CCI itself is a momentum indicator. Such indicators all work in the same basic fashion - plot the difference between a "fast" measure of price and a "slow" measure. In the case of the CCI, the "fast" measure is the price itself, and the "slow" measure is a moving average. Thus when we look at the CCI, what we are actually seeing is a measurement of the deviation of price from its moving average, normalised to fit on a scale of roughly -200 to +200.
Typically, traders of Woodies system trade very short timescales - 3 or 5 minute charts being common. I do NOT trade the Woodies system so I personal can't comment on it.
The Vortex Indicator consists of two oscillators that capture positive and negative trend movement.
A bullish signal triggers when the positive trend indicator crosses above the negative trend indicator or a key level.
A bearish signal triggers when the negative trend indicator crosses above the positive trend indicator or a key level. The Vortex Indicator is either above or below these levels, which means it always has a clear bullish or bearish bias.
Calculation of the Vortex Indicator can be divided into three parts. First, calculate the positive and negative trend movements based on the highs and lows of the last two periods. Positive trend movement is the distance from the current high to the prior low. The further the current high is from the prior low, the more positive the trend movement. Negative trend movement is the distance from the current low to the prior high. The further the current low is from the prior high, the more negative the trend movement. These periodic values are then summed based on the indicator setting, which is the usually 14 periods.
The second part involves the True Range, which was created by Welles Wilder. This indicator uses the current high, current low and prior close to measure volatility
The third part normalizes the positive and negative trend movements by dividing them by the True Range. In effect, the Vortex Indicator shows volatility-adjusted positive trend movement and volatility-adjusted negative trend movement. The end result creates to indicators that oscillate above/below 1.
Please Keep in mind that the Vortex Indicator is not designed as a standalone indicator.