Recent Strength indicator

Hello Hanover,

Is it possible that you can add sound and push notification to the Recent Strength Indicator for any pair that hit 100 and/or 0?

thanks so much

Sorry, but no. Some reasons:

1. The push notification feature is available only in MQL4 build 600+, and I still do all of my coding in build 509.

2. When the plots reach 100/0, this represents nothing significant IMHO. All of the plots are re-scaled, and their values are also significantly affected by whatever parameter settings are used. This is explained further here: note the GBP (red) plot in the first two screenshots, for example. It reaches 0 in the second image, but gets nowhere near it in the first. Yet the only difference was changing the BasePoint.

There are dozens of other strength indicators (see the links in green typeface in post #1 as a starting point), I assume that many of them would include alerts.

@ hanover

You've created a very good indicator!

But there often occur "spikes" which look like some currencies are breaking out right now or making significant moves.
But it's not real and the spikes will be corrected in the very next minute.
It's very annoying.
I think that's a bug.

My settings:

TimeFrames: M5
NumPoints: D1

I'm not 100% sure, but I think I know the reason. Suppose the indicator is attached to the EU M5 chart. When the first price tick of a new EU M5 candle arrives, it could easily occur before the first tick of a new M5 candle arrives for ALL of the currency pairs needed to perform the calculation (if you are plotting strength for the 8 major currencies, there are 28 pairs involved). Hence the calculation has to operate with incomplete data for the new M5 price point, causing unpredictable results.

To get around this, you could try setting RefreshEveryXMins to 0, which will cause the indicator to update on EVERY price tick, possibly slowing MT4 down, but it will cause the indicator to automatically recalculate and self-correct immediately the required new data arrives. Hope this makes sense! I just tried it on my computer and any spikes tend to disappear within the next tick or two.

That's the best I can do, without revisiting some very complex code that I haven't looked at for a number of years (and hence the risk of accidentally introducing new bugs would be quite high. I guess a sensible fix would be to use the close price of the previous candle as a proxy, until the new candle starts to form, for each required pair). However, I'm busy working on other projects at the moment, so I wouldn't be able to look at this for a few weeks, in any case.

Also, there are many other strength indicators available; see the green typeface in post #1 for links to some of these.

I had the same problem with my versions and solved it by checking each currency for a new bar, keeping track in a boolean array. When all had a new bar I did the calculation. If source code is available for this one I can look into it.
Robert Hill

Thanks, that fixed the problem!

I've made a quick fix, as stated:
I haven't checked all the implications properly, nor tested it exhaustively, but I've run it on both M1 and M5 charts for around 30 minutes, and it seems to have stopped the spiking. Try it and let me know.

I've attached the new version below. If it causes problems that I haven't thought of, in the meantime you can return to the prior version in post #1, and simply set RefreshEveryXMins to 0 as before.

Many thanks for alerting me to this problem. ______________________________
Hi Robert,
Many thanks for your very kind offer, however I believe I have successfully effected a fix myself.
David

I will run the new version for a whole day.

But as far as i can see right now, these false spikes don't occur anymore.

Update: now, the new version works perfectly.

Very nice work and well done hanover.

Thanks for the feedback. I ran it on a M1 chart and noticed only one spike in about 30 minutes. I think it happened because no price tick occurred for any currencies across two consecutive M1 candles. Anyway, the whole problem sorts itself by setting RefreshEveryXMins to 0, causing the indicator to recalculate/re-plot itself on every tick of the current chart's pair, which seems to resolve any spike within the next 1-2 ticks. This also means that you get immediate notification of any breakout, without having to wait until the end of the candle. Speed is everything if you want to front run the banks LOL.

hanover,

i'm sorry to bother you but sadly i have found another serious bug.

Every 5 minutes there happens a distortion between the currencies, they either expand or contract to each other (the distance between them). It will be corrected only in the very next minute (RefreshEveryXMins: 1) or on the very next tick (RefreshEveryXMins: 0).

Check out the picture below.

1 and 3 are synchron, but 2 has these distortions (it happens every 5 minutes).

The previous version has the same bug.


My settings:

TimeFrames: M5
NumPoints: D1


Any chance you can fix that?

I don't think it's a bug. I'm pretty sure that the indicator is behaving exactly as it was originally designed to. I will try to explain further.

1. What matters is the shape and slope of each individual line, NOT the position of one line relative to another. The indicator plots values on a scale from 0 to 100. Now, for example, if the red currency (GBP) line rises from 10 to 30 and then falls back to 20, that is exactly the same as if it rises from 70 to 90 and then falls back to 80. It is the change in value that is important, NOT the value itself. In this example, it means that GBP strengthened significantly (the value increased by 20) against the basket of currencies, after which it weakened a little (its value decreased by 10).

Likewise, if the value of the red line (GBP) at one point is 80, and the value of the purple line (JPY) at the same point is 60, it does NOT mean that GBP is stronger than JPY. Think about it. If GBPJPY is currently 148.00, that means that 1 pound is worth 148 yen. It doesn't mean that the pound is 'stronger' than the yen. However, if GBPJPY moves from 148.00 to 149.00, then we can say that the pound has strengthened relative to the yen (or the yen has weakened relative to the pound). But to say that the pound is currently stronger or weaker than the yen would be silly.**

In this respect, the indicator's legend is completely misleading. If it says that GBP is 80 and JPY is 60, that in itself is meaningless. Originally the indicator didn't have the legend, but I reluctantly added it later (in version 1.09) only because an FF member begged me to provide it. You'll notice that I've subsequently refused to add alerts to the indicator, when one line crosses another for example, because this would be meaningless for the same reason (see posts #146, #738, #747).

Summarising then, you need to consider each line in isolation, and whether it is moving upwards or downwards, rather than comparing the value of one line relative to another. To avoid possible confusion, each line should ideally be plotted in its own separate subwindow, but obviously this would consume too much screen space.

2. The indicator is constantly re-scaling itself to ensure that (a) each individual line represents the gain or loss in strength of that currency relative to the basket as a whole, AND (b) all of the lines fit within a range from 0 to 100, AND (c) assuming BasePoint = -1 and SmootingSMA = 1, all of the lines start from the same value at the left of the chart. This means that the indicator must "repaint", whenever necessary, to meet all of these criteria.
For more info on the calculations, see post #7.

3. With regard to point 2(c), all of the lines should start at the same value at the left of the chart, but this value can change every time the chart gets re-plotted, to ensure that all of the criteria in point 2 are met. This means that, while the historical shape and slope of the lines remain constant, each line may move up and down within the subwindow. This doesn't compromise the indicator's ability to provide valid currency strengthening/weakening information, for the reasons given in point 1.

4. In your second screenshot, the lines don't appear to be starting at the same value at the left of the chart (see below), i.e. point 2(c) is not being met. If your settings are BasePoint = -1 and SmootingSMA = 1, I don't know why this is happening. I've just been watching the indicator running for 2 hours on my computer, and I haven't been able to reproduce this. But then I don't know what your parameter settings are. Anyway, as long as the historical shape and slope of the lines remains constant, which appears to be the case across your 3 screenshots, this doesn't compromise the indicator's ability to provide valid currency strengthening/weakening information, for the reasons given in point 1.


The indicator was written for my own use, and is provided free, on an 'as is, take it or leave it' basis. Given the way that I use it, I'm perfectly happy with the way that it currently operates.
I will attach the MQ4 source code to post #1, so that anybody can modify it to suit their own requirements, if they wish.
[EDIT] Changed my mind for the reasons here.

[EDIT 2] **By way of example, in the first screenshot below, USD (white line) is strengthening relative to the basket, and CHF (yellow) is weakening (on the M1 horizon). Nonetheless, USD's final value is below NZD (blue). This doesn't mean that USD is weaker than NZD. In fact, NZDUSD is probably falling because the white line has been rising recently while the blue line has been moving sideways.

Thanks for the reply.

The indicator runs on a GlobalPrime Demo account.

I will try to change NumPoints to the previous trading day and time 23:00

That will avoid possible daily gaps which maybe cause the issue.


Edit:

Changing the NumPoints to 1 hour before the open or rollover didn't help, it keeps doing this weird thing.
Looks like i have to live with that.
Nevertheless, it's a great indicator hanover.

hei may i ask for this indicator
thnk

I've been having a problem getting this indicator to display information on all the major indices. My broker lists GBP/USD, EUR/USD, AUD/USD, and EUR/GBP "normally'. All the other pairs end with a subscript character like so: AUDCHF_

Is this the issue, and if so, is there a solution?

Thx

I opened a demo account under another broker that didn't append extra characters to the end of the pairs and everything worked fine. I just need to edit the code so it will read currencies quoted as EURUSD_ on my main account. The problem is I don't do code. Any tips from anybody?

Thx

I went in under "indicator list", "edit", "inputs", then changed all the pairs listed after **_Pairs_Wgts to include the "_" extension. All works fine now.

Sorry for the incompetence.

I was attempting to use this indicator as a currency strength reference during manual backtesting. Using the HistoricalShift parameter to take a peek back at the last 15 candles of the M30, H1, H4, D1, and W1 charts on Jan. 16th, 2018, I entered 4704, 2352, 588, 98, 18 respectively. That's the total number of candles for each time period starting from today's date and ending on Jan. 16th, 2018 (ignoring weekends and holidays). Am I doing this correctly? Will I end up with an accurate currency strength value for my target time period?

The indicator values look fairly normal but there is no output for the M30 timeframe. I'm assuming 4704 candles went beyond the maximum range. The date legends at the top seem suspect.

https://i.imgur.com/lJ5wD4Z.png

Pls if anyone has the quantum currency strength indicator pls share.

Look, there it is!!!

https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/2316#description