I've been interested in breakout strategies for some time. I like them because they are price-driven with little or no lag involved and reflect the reality of the market - there are trends and periods of relative inactivity between trends during which price does not gain or lose much. Many popular strategies have been developed using boxes and breakouts (Big Ben comes to mind), in fact my primary trading strategy is based on daily highs and lows which is, for all practical purposes, a box.
I developed the FlexBox indicator to take advantage of breakouts in a more flexible way without making the assumption that "boxes" form according to a predictable schedule.
The FlexBox indicator is posted below and can be used on any timeframe. First, a few thoughts on how to use it:
Entries - Enter a trade at the close of a bar outside the box. Wait for the current bar to close completely.
Stoploss - Place a stoploss at the opposite side of the box from the breakout (or add a few pips if the box has a small price range).
Exits - Exit when the entry rule is met for a trade in the opposite direction.
The indicator is already compiled so simply copy it to your experts/indicators folder and place on the chart from there. It's unfortunate to be compelled to post compiled code on this forum but there have been several instances of the intellectual property of members being sold on EBay and I don't want that to happen to me.
The user-accessible parameters are:
ROCPeriod - Boxes are formed based on an imbedded ROC indicator. The default here is 2 but I have tried values up to 5 without changing the results much - boxes just start a bit later.
BoxThreshold - This is important. After experimentation I've settled on a default of 12.0 but this may need to be smaller for timeframes shorter than 1 hour (which is the timeframe I recommend).
BoxMinBars - The number of bars in a box before it actually appears on the chart. Default is 3 because it works for me.
BoxColor - self-explanatory.
I have not traded live yet with this indicator but have done a lot of "eyeball" testing and feel that the indicator is interesting enough to share. I hope to learn more by reading the comments of others than I can learn by myself.
A few requests:
Please post questions/comments to the thread directly so we may all learn from them rather than by PM - my mailbox is too full already.
PLEASE do not post "how do I put an indicator on a chart..." questions. Metatrader is very well documented in its help screens and these questions are also answered in the stickies in the beginners forum.
Please, no charts larger than 600x600 (how to post charts is also covered in a sticky - you can do it from within MT4, no external websites needed).
No, there is no EA yet. I'll get to that in due course if I determine that the indicator is effective enough to be worth the effort. That's where all of you come in...
I developed the FlexBox indicator to take advantage of breakouts in a more flexible way without making the assumption that "boxes" form according to a predictable schedule.
The FlexBox indicator is posted below and can be used on any timeframe. First, a few thoughts on how to use it:
Entries - Enter a trade at the close of a bar outside the box. Wait for the current bar to close completely.
Stoploss - Place a stoploss at the opposite side of the box from the breakout (or add a few pips if the box has a small price range).
Exits - Exit when the entry rule is met for a trade in the opposite direction.
The indicator is already compiled so simply copy it to your experts/indicators folder and place on the chart from there. It's unfortunate to be compelled to post compiled code on this forum but there have been several instances of the intellectual property of members being sold on EBay and I don't want that to happen to me.
The user-accessible parameters are:
ROCPeriod - Boxes are formed based on an imbedded ROC indicator. The default here is 2 but I have tried values up to 5 without changing the results much - boxes just start a bit later.
BoxThreshold - This is important. After experimentation I've settled on a default of 12.0 but this may need to be smaller for timeframes shorter than 1 hour (which is the timeframe I recommend).
BoxMinBars - The number of bars in a box before it actually appears on the chart. Default is 3 because it works for me.
BoxColor - self-explanatory.
I have not traded live yet with this indicator but have done a lot of "eyeball" testing and feel that the indicator is interesting enough to share. I hope to learn more by reading the comments of others than I can learn by myself.
A few requests:
Please post questions/comments to the thread directly so we may all learn from them rather than by PM - my mailbox is too full already.
PLEASE do not post "how do I put an indicator on a chart..." questions. Metatrader is very well documented in its help screens and these questions are also answered in the stickies in the beginners forum.
Please, no charts larger than 600x600 (how to post charts is also covered in a sticky - you can do it from within MT4, no external websites needed).
No, there is no EA yet. I'll get to that in due course if I determine that the indicator is effective enough to be worth the effort. That's where all of you come in...
Attached File(s)
FlexBox_Indicator.ex4
4 KB
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17,144 downloads
Old Benjamin was right