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Histogram Indicator Question

  • #1
  • First Post: Jul 7, 2009 5:39am Jul 7, 2009 5:39am
Hi,
Could someone please help me by posting the absolute minimum code required to plot a value as a histogram? (The value I'm working with is the pip difference between Pair1 and Pair2 for example.)

I've been messing about with it by stealing bits from here and there, but from the bits I've copied from other indicators I can't figure out how to specify a "0" point for the histogram bars to originate from, nor the number of bars back to be calculated. I would also like to have a fixed "range" +/- for the histogram.

Thanks very much.
John
  • #2
  • Jul 7, 2009 11:51am Jul 7, 2009 11:51am
Hi John,

Hope this gets you one step closer. In lieu of anything more useful, it simply plots the position of the close on each candle, as a percentage of the candle height.

Range of the indicator subwindow is set by:
#property indicator_minimum -10
#property indicator_maximum 110

Levels (dotted lines, optional) plotted by:
#property indicator_level1 100
#property indicator_level2 0

Number of histogram bars is set by the loop:
for(int i=0; i<Bars; i++) {
0 = rightmost (most recent) bar on chart
Bars = predefined variable giving number of bars on chart

David

Inserted Code
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
//|                                             Histogram sample.mq4 |
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
#property indicator_separate_window
#property indicator_minimum -10
#property indicator_maximum 110
#property indicator_level1 100
#property indicator_level2 0
#property indicator_buffers 1

double HistBuffer[];

//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
int init()  {
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
  SetIndexBuffer(0, HistBuffer);
  SetIndexStyle(0, DRAW_HISTOGRAM, STYLE_SOLID, 3, Red);
  IndicatorDigits(0);
  return(0);
}

//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
int deinit()  {
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
  return(0);
}

//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
int start()  {
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
  for(int i=0; i<Bars; i++)  {
    if (High[i]-Low[i] > 0) 
      HistBuffer[i] = 100 * (Close[i]-Low[i]) / (High[i]-Low[i]);  
  }
  return(0);
}
  • #3
  • Jul 7, 2009 12:54pm Jul 7, 2009 12:54pm
Hi David,
Thanks very much! This will certainly help me on my way.

All the best,
John
  • #4
  • Jul 7, 2009 5:11pm Jul 7, 2009 5:11pm
Ok, sort of got something working. There are some issues however.

First, let me explain what I'm trying to do. I want to compare the pip differential between Pair1 and Pair2 (in this case EURUSD and GBPUSD). I'm using the day's opening price as the zero point.

So, we take the open price of 1.6120 and subtract the current price of 1.6100 and we see that price has moved down 20 pips at the moment. Do the same for the other pair and come up with a 40 pip move (for example).

So say we have GBPUSD=(-20) and EURUSD=(-40). We can see that both pairs are moving down from the open, and that EUR is ahead in the down move by 20 pips.

What I'm trying to do is make a nice little histogram that shows me this difference. The code below (which was cut and pasted by me from an indicator Swingman wrote, and the piece from above) does pretty much what I want. At the moment it is only displaying the price from open on the histogram (for one pair), and this brings me to issue number1.

Issue #1) Right now the indicator is drawing tick by tick. Which is great, but if you load it onto a new chart you have to wait hours/minutes/days in order to have it populate with data. Is there a way to call the last tick(I guess thats the same thing as the close huh?) and populate all bars other than the current bar? Is there a better call than MarketInfo Mode_Bid to calculate this with?

Issue #2) This is obviously more advanced, but would it be possible to mark a blip at the top/bottom of the histogram to indicate high/low, like on a stereo equalizer, since the histo bars might hit a high/low and then receede before closing?

Issue #3) Right now I'm manually entering a start date. What would be the code to have the indicator automatically start on the open of the last 00:00 1M candle?

My idea may be dumb, but I'd like to play it out to the end anyway. I'm hoping to use this indicator to visualise the range of the pip difference between correlated pairs. My thinking is, if you can get a sense of the range of the correlation on a daily basis, then you could enter a trade when your at the widest part, and trade back towards the center.

If anyone has ideas about any of the above points I'm all ears. Ultimately this is something I want to write myself as a learning process, but your help to steer me in the right directiong would be appreciated.
Thanks
John

Inserted Code
 
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
//|                                             Histogram sample.mq4 |
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
#property indicator_separate_window
#property indicator_minimum -100
#property indicator_maximum 150
#property indicator_level1 100
#property indicator_level2 -150
#property indicator_buffers 1
double HistBuffer[];
extern string Pair1 = "GBPUSD";
extern string Pair2 = "EURUSD";
extern int    StartDate = D'2009.7.8 00:00';
extern string StartingTimeCorr = "2009.07.08 00:00";
extern int    TFperiod = 60;
extern int    moreBars = 0;
double        ExtMapBuffer1[];
double        ExtMapBuffer2[];
double        dPoint;
int           iWindow;
int           firstBar;
int           _BarsCount, _LastBar;
 
 
int init()  
{
SetIndexBuffer(0, HistBuffer);
SetIndexStyle(0, DRAW_HISTOGRAM, STYLE_SOLID, 3, Red);
IndicatorDigits(4);
return(0);
}
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
int deinit()  
{
return(0);
}
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
int start()  
{
double Price_1=MarketInfo(Pair1,MODE_ASK);
double Open_Pair1 = iOpen(Pair1, PERIOD_M1, iBarShift(NULL, PERIOD_M1, {StartDate}, True));
firstBar = iBarShift(NULL,TFperiod,StrToTime(StartingTimeCorr),true);
if (firstBar <0 )
{
Alert("StartingTimeCorr seems to be wrong."); return (0);
}
 
RefreshRates();
ArrayInitialize( ExtMapBuffer1, 0.0 );
ArrayInitialize( ExtMapBuffer2, 0.0 );
 
_BarsCount = WindowBarsPerChart() +  moreBars  +1;
int _FirstBar = firstBar;
int _LastBar = _FirstBar - _BarsCount +  moreBars  +1 ;
if ( _LastBar < 0 ) 
{
   _LastBar = 0;
   _BarsCount = _FirstBar +  moreBars +1 ;
}
 
 
int i=0; //i<Bars; i++) 
 
{
//if (High[i]-Low[i] > 0) 
HistBuffer[i] = (((Price_1)-(Open_Pair1))*10000);  
}
return(0);
}
  • #5
  • Jul 7, 2009 10:02pm Jul 7, 2009 10:02pm
Ok. Got it more or less working.

Oddly; I get different results when it's on different charts, though both charts should be calling the same information.
Any ideas?

Inserted Code
 
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
//|                                   JM_Pip Differential v1.006.mq4 |
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+

#property indicator_separate_window
#property indicator_minimum -200
#property indicator_maximum 200
#property indicator_level1 100
#property indicator_level2 -100
#property indicator_level3 -50
#property indicator_level4 50
#property indicator_level5 0
#property indicator_buffers 1
//---- input parameters
extern color  FontColor=Red;
extern int    FontSize=18;
extern string FontType="Arial Black";
extern string Pair1 = "GBPUSD";
extern string Pair2 = "EURUSD";
extern int    StartDate = D'2009.7.8 00:00';
extern string StartingTimeCorr = "2009.07.08 00:00";
extern int    TFperiod = 60;
extern int    moreBars = 0;
extern double Range = 200;
//---- variables
int           iWindow;
int           firstBar;
int           _BarsCount, _LastBar;
double HistBuffer[];
double        ExtMapBuffer1[];
double        ExtMapBuffer2[];
double        dPoint;
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
//| Custom indicator initialization function                         |
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
int init()  
{
   SetIndexBuffer(0, HistBuffer);
   SetIndexStyle(0, DRAW_HISTOGRAM, STYLE_SOLID, 3, Red);
   IndicatorDigits(0);
return(0);
}
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
//| Custom indicator deinitialization function                       |
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
int deinit()  
{
   ObjectDelete("Pip_Diff_Label");
   ObjectDelete("Buy_Sell_Label");
return(0);
}
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
int start()  
{
   double Price_1=MarketInfo(Pair1,MODE_ASK);
   double Price_2=MarketInfo(Pair2,MODE_ASK);
   double Open_Pair1 = iOpen(Pair1, PERIOD_M1, iBarShift(NULL, PERIOD_M1, {StartDate}, True));
   double Open_Pair2 = iOpen(Pair2, PERIOD_M1, iBarShift(NULL, PERIOD_M1, {StartDate}, True));
   double Variance1 = ((Price_1-Open_Pair1)*10000);
   double Variance2 = ((Price_2-Open_Pair2)*10000);
   double Differential = Variance1-Variance2;
   int Output1 = Variance1;
   int Output2 = Variance2;
   firstBar = iBarShift(NULL,TFperiod,StrToTime(StartingTimeCorr),true);
   
   if (firstBar <0 )
      {
         Alert("StartingTimeCorr seems to be wrong."); return (0);
      }
       
   RefreshRates();
   ArrayInitialize( ExtMapBuffer1, 0.0 );
   ArrayInitialize( ExtMapBuffer2, 0.0 );
  
   _BarsCount = WindowBarsPerChart() +  moreBars  +1;
   int _FirstBar = firstBar;
   int _LastBar = _FirstBar - _BarsCount +  moreBars  +1 ;
   if ( _LastBar < 0 ) 
      {
         _LastBar = 0;
         _BarsCount = _FirstBar +  moreBars +1 ;
      }
  
  
   int i=0; //i<Bars; i++) 

   //Add bold number to histogram window
   string Pip_Diff = DoubleToStr(Differential,0);
   ObjectCreate("Pip_Diff_Label", OBJ_LABEL, 1, 0, 0);
   ObjectSetText("Pip_Diff_Label",Pip_Diff, FontSize, FontType, FontColor);
   ObjectSet("Pip_Diff_Label", OBJPROP_CORNER, 1);
   ObjectSet("Pip_Diff_Label", OBJPROP_XDISTANCE, 1);
   ObjectSet("Pip_Diff_Label", OBJPROP_YDISTANCE, 1);
   {
   HistBuffer[i] = Differential;  
   IndicatorShortName("Differential  "+Pair2+"=("+Output2+")  "+Pair1+"=("+ Output1+")");
   }
   
return(0);
}
  • #6
  • Jul 11, 2009 1:28pm Jul 11, 2009 1:28pm
Quoting Jm1941
Oddly; I get different results when it's on different charts, though both charts should be calling the same information.
Any ideas?
iBarShift(NULL,.....) will return the candle number of the pair to which the chart is attached. Perhaps iBarShift(Pair1,.....) etc would work better?

Sorry, I haven't the time to walk thru your code in detail, so I'm merely guessing.
  • #7
  • Jul 13, 2009 8:31am Jul 13, 2009 8:31am
Thanks, Will give that a try.
  • #8
  • Jul 21, 2009 10:18am Jul 21, 2009 10:18am
Could someone please give me a quick idea how you stuff data into an array?

I've been thru the MT4 help but it's too cryptic for me in this regard.

Basically I have 20 values I want to average. I'm using some other math to create these values so I can't just use [close price, period 20] for example.

So for each bar I am creating a number. I want to average out the last 20 bars worth of this number and do some other math to it.

I'm guessing an array is the way to do it, but I'm lost as to where to begin.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
John
  • #9
  • Jul 21, 2009 3:08pm Jul 21, 2009 3:08pm
double myarray[20];


myarray[0] = value1; // first value

myarray[1] = value2; // second value

.
.
.

myarray[19] = value20; // 20th value


averageval = 0 ;

for(int i=0;i<20;i++)
{
averageval = averageval + myarray[i] ;
}

averageval = averageval / 20 ;
  • #10
  • Jul 21, 2009 3:55pm Jul 21, 2009 3:55pm
Hi Evan,
Thanks very much for that.

Could you help with a brief explanation of what i++ does for me and what it is doing in the above code?

I understand it is adding 1 to itself and so on, but I'm a bit fuzzy with that.

Thanks
John
  • #11
  • Jul 21, 2009 6:27pm Jul 21, 2009 6:27pm
Quoting Jm1941
Hi Evan,
Thanks very much for that.

Could you help with a brief explanation of what i++ does for me and what it is doing in the above code?

I understand it is adding 1 to itself and so on, but I'm a bit fuzzy with that.

Thanks
John
John,

The statement
for(int i=0;i<20;i++)
sets up a 'loop'.

-- The section before the first semi-colon int i=0 determines the start criteria, i.e. the variable i is set to a value of 0.

-- The section before the second semi-colon i<20 determines the condition needed to keep the loop 'alive', i.e. i must remain less than 20. As soon as this condition no longer exists, i.e. i reaches a value of 20, the loop ends, and the program procced with the first statement outisde the curly braces, i.e.
averageval = averageval / 20 ;

-- The section before the second semi-colon i<20 occurs during each iteration of the loop. i++ is permissible shorthand for i=i+1, i.e. increase the value of i by 1. Everything inside the curly braces
{
averageval = averageval + myarray[i] ;
}
gets executed just prior to the value of i being increased.

See http://docs.mql4.com/basis/operators/for for more info.
  • #12
  • Jul 21, 2009 7:53pm Jul 21, 2009 7:53pm
That's great. Very helpful.
Thanks very much.
John
  • #13
  • Jul 21, 2009 10:48pm Jul 21, 2009 10:48pm
I also have a question,
is it possible to draw histogram in the same window with the chart? (w/o using objects to draw it manually 1 by 1),
just like the Volumes histogram when we Enable showing Volume in the chart option/properties

Thanks in advance
  • #14
  • Sep 30, 2009 6:02am Sep 30, 2009 6:02am
Helllo jm1941

can you kindly post latest final version... of above?
Interested in it!

Regards
100 Fold Challenge->Interested? ->https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/32152
  • #15
  • Last Post: Oct 24, 2009 7:14pm Oct 24, 2009 7:14pm
Quoting Jm1941
Hi,
Could someone please help me by posting the absolute minimum code required to plot a value as a histogram? (The value I'm working with is the pip difference between Pair1 and Pair2 for example.)

I've been messing about with it by stealing bits from here and there, but from the bits I've copied from other indicators I can't figure out how to specify a "0" point for the histogram bars to originate from, nor the number of bars back to be calculated. I would also like to have a fixed "range" +/- for the histogram.

Thanks very much.
John
--------------------
Hi

I need Pip different table between Pair1 vs Pair2 for trade setup.

see attached Jason Pdf
Attached File(s)
File Type: pdf correlation-secret.pdf   252 KB | 1,184 downloads
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