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Indicator
Purpose:
To mark Price Swing Points on a chart (WILL NOT REPAINT)
Inputs:
- BarsPreceding – number of consecutive bars preceding a bar that must have lower highs (for swing High points) or must have higher lows (for swing Low points).
- Space – controls how far the Swing High and Swing Low dots will be drawn from the price bars. It is a number of pips between the Swing High or Low dot marking the bar and the bar itself.
- RunningSolo – set to true if you are running the indicator directly on a chart. If an EA is calling the indicator it should set this input to false
- NumHistoryBars – number of historical bars to check on the first price tick that the indicator runs. On subsequent price ticks, only recent bars will be checked. Also when RunningSolo is false only recent bars are checked.
- BarThickness – controls how heavy a dot is used to mark the Swing High and Swing Low bars
- HighColor – Swing High bars will be marked with a dot of this color
- LowColor – Swing Low bars will be marked with a dot of this color.
User Notes:
One of the “Holy Grails” of indicators is to find one that can mark Swing High and Swing Low bars without “repainting”. Repainting is where an indicator will mark a bar with a graphical symbol and then some bars later move (repaint) or remove the symbol. The internet is full of spectacular pictures of indicators marking Swing Highs and Lows perfectly. Not until one actually runs an indicator do they become aware of the repainting that often takes place.
Since no Swing point indicator can possibly know whether a Swing High or Low is going to be surpassed in the future, this is always unavoidable if you are marking the just-closed price bar as a swing high or low bar. The same problem effects the Zig Zag indicator and other indicators of that ilk.
To better handle this, the HighLow indicator requires that the three bars immediately following a bar must be lower than that bar in the case of a Swing High bar and Higher than that bar in the case of a Swing Low bar. Of course while the HighLow indicator will not repaint, the trade-off is that the HighLow indicator will not mark bars until three bars after a Swing bar. So there is some lag that must be tolerated. Also same direction swing points can appear as early as 4 bars later. However as prices typically retrace, the indicator can still be useful to the patient trader and signals given may be better confirmed by other indicators or price action at a later time.
The BarsPreceding input is the most critical input. The larger this number the more significant are the Swing points that get identified.
System Requirements
To run Metatrader 4 you should be using Windows 2000 or later, with a 2.0 GHz or faster CPU, and at least 512 MB RAM (although 1 GB is recommended). You should have a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher, and an internet connection speed of 56 kbps or faster.