Recent Strength indicator

Latest version of CSM is attached to this post.

The indicator now includes a 'Trend Summary' feature which is enabled if you set SummarySpacing to a value > 0. The summary plots all of the CSM values for each TF as a line graph, allowing you to quickly view which currencies are strong across several TFs (colored line is above the midpoint in consecutive TFs) or are becoming stronger (colored line slopes upward). Vice versa for weakness. See screenshot (this uses the default parameter settings).

For example, one possible use might be: find a pair where one currency is above the midpoint (strong) in all of the W1/D1/H4 TFs, and has pulled back below the median line in the lower TFs; then enter immediately its curve starts sloping up again. Pair this against a (weak) currency that is doing the exact opposite.

When currencies are not strong (or weak) on all of W1/D1/H4, the market is in a state of flux, and I suggest using a range trading strategy, or staying out altogether. This is the type of situation shown the screenshot. AUD weakness and CHF strength has dissipated recently, leaving the direction unclear: I've been closing out my AUDCHF sells.

To install the latest update:
--- Download the .mq4 and .ex4 files to your ....(MT4)/experts/indicators folder.
--- Download the .mqh files to your ....(MT4)/experts/include folder (note: the .mq4 file will not compile correctly without these).
--- Then exit and restart MT4.

Happy holidays.

David

All of your productions are like a fine work of art. Thank you, Mr. Hanover.

Looking forward to testing more this week.

this is brilliant. i have been trying to use RS in a MTF context and i expect this will really allow me to move forward faster.

thanks david. i will return with any learnings i discover from using it.

Thank you, Hanover.

I'm sorry, but I'm currently busy with other projects, and I prefer to work with my own code, as I sometimes find code written by other programmers difficult to decipher. Why not post your request on one of the 'I code your indicators for free' threads, which are visited by many programmers? Hopefully somebody will be able to help you.

OVERVIEW

I attempted to modify Recent Strength, but reached the conclusion that the calculation was too different to easily accommodate an oscillator-based strength meter. Hence I've written a new indicator, Recent Oscillator Strength ('ROS'), as a companion to Recent Strength (see the screenshot below). ROS's calculation is currently based on Stochastic, but I'll rescale its plot in the next version, to allow RSI and CCI as possible alternatives.

ROS is simpler to setup and use; there are no parameter files to be built. Just attach the indy to your chart, and wait maybe 10-20 minutes while MT4 collects enough data from your br0ker to build the plots.

ROS simply averages out the Stochastic values for every pair referenced by a currency, and plots this average. For example, the GBP plot is the average stochastic value of GBPUSD, GBPJPY, GBPCHF, and so on....... whatever GBP pairs are offered by your br0ker. [Note: in the case of EURGBP, i.e. where the currency is the second listed in the pair, the inverse value (100–X) is used in the averaging process]. And then the same process is applied for each of the other currencies. Hence you can see to what extent a currency is overbought/oversold 'across the board'. As with regular stochastic, being overbought/oversold does not necessarily mean that a reversal is imminent; if a pair trends strongly for long enough, oscillators tend to simply remain in either the top or bottom area of the chart. But ROS may be useful if it confirms other reasons for reversals, e.g. support/resistance.


INSTALLATION

Copy the .ex4 file to your ...(MT4)/experts/indicators folder, and then restart MT4.


PARAMETERS

SymbolSuffix
Enter m if your br0ker's symbols read like EURUSDm, GBPUSDm, and so on. [Note: the actual currencies are hard-coded as AUD, CAD, CHF, EUR, GBP, JPY, NZD and USD. MT4 has 8 data buffers, allowing only these 8 currencies to be plotted].

TimeFrames
Enter the timeframes you want to be plotted, separated by commas.

NumPoints
Enter the number of data points (stochastic values) you'd like plotted for each timeframe.

OscillatorSettings
Items must be separated by commas. The first item must be 'Stochastic', and the other settings for stochastic must be entered same sequence as explained here (%K, %D, slowing, method, price_field, mode).

CurrencyColors
The colors that will be used to plot AUD, CAD, CHF, EUR, GBP, JPY, NZD and USD, respectively. Eight entries separated by commas. Any valid MT4 tokens may be used, or entries like R55G200B0 (means red=55, green=200, blue=0).

TextFont
Font name, size and color, in that order, separated by commas. Font name must be an already installed Windows font.

HorizLevels
Multiple entries separated by commas, that define where you'd like any horizontal levels to be plotted:
-- First entry is the color of the levels (works the same as CurrencyColors)
-- Second entry is the width of the lines
-- Third entry is the lines style (0=solid, 1=dashed, 2=dotted etc)
-- The remaining entries are the level values themselves

RefreshPeriod
How often you want the indicator to recalculate and replot:
T=every new price tick, M1=at the start of every new 1 min candle, M5=at the start of every new 5 min candle, etc

OutputFile
Leave blank if you don't want an output file; otherwise enter a file name, in which case all values plotted will also be output to a text file of that name, which will be created in your .../(MT4)/experts/files folder. The file could then be read by an EA, and its data used to make trading decisions.

SummarySpacing
The 'Trend Summary' feature (at the left of the plot) is enabled if you set SummarySpacing to a value > 0, and are displaying all TimeFrames. The summary plots all of the final (rightmost) values for each TF as a line graph, allowing you to quickly view which currencies are overbought across several TFs (colored line is above the midpoint in consecutive TFs) or are becoming more overbought (colored line slopes upward). Vice versa for oversoldness.


TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Please note that all code in this thread is supplied FREE of charge. Therefore the following conditions apply:

1. You agree that, if you download and use the code, it is ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. I offer NO guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the code, or that is free from error. I accept NO LIABILITY for any financial losses or computer related damage, caused by either the correct or incorrect use of the code.

2. Feel welcome to share the indicator freely. However, you may NOT sell, or otherwise distribute, any part of the code commercially, without my prior written consent.

3. The code may not run correctly on Windows 7, Windows 8 or Vista, probably for the reasons given here.

4. I'm sorry, but due to my current work commitments, I am no longer modifying code to suit people’s personal requirements, nor posting replies to every individual question in this thread. (If you can’t get the code to do what you want, you’ll need to find another indicator).

5. Source code (.mq4 file) is NOT available.

hi David,
after installing all necessary files, my indicator still looks like this..
Thanks, Hukam

---
got soloution:--
if someone have similar problem please install Placard MT Condensed.ZIP fornts in your computer.
this indicator is working perfectly in XP, Window 7, Window 8
thanks David for all your shared work.
Regards
Hukam

Hi David, the CSM is not drawing correctly. any ideas?

Have you tried Hukam's solution in post #547?

The same indicator works fine for me (see screenshot in post #541). The bars on the histogram are created by taking a series of 'I' characters (e.g. IIIIIIIII) in the Placard MT Condensed font and rotating them 270°. Perhaps your br0ker has some restrictions on allowable fonts or rotating text within MT4?

Beyond that, rebooting your computer and restarting MT4 might help, although I'm clutching at straws.

@hukam: many thanks for the info.

installing the font did the trick ! so sorry to bother you with this !

No problem, I'm glad that it's working OK for you now.

hi again, i am using the external data in Excel. i am having trouble running lookup functions (MATCH, in particular) on this data. i suspect the data is 'dirty' ie. non-printing characters, extra spaces, etc. in each field. if so, is it possible to separate the data by only a single comma?

also, how often does the CSV file get written?

Assuming you're referring to the 'CSM original' indy:

The only characters apart from the commas are spaces, and the industry standard CR/LF at the end of each line. I simply double click on the CSM.CSV file that's generated, and it loads directly into Excel, in the format shown in the screenshot (no need to even run Data...Text to Columns....). I've never used Excel's MATCH function, so I'm afraid I can't help with that.

The CSV file output frequency is determined by the RefreshPeriod setting. M1 means that the file is output on the first tick of each new M1 candle, M5 on the first tick of each M5 candle etc. An entry of T means output occurs on every new tick. In all cases the file is completely overwritten with the new data. If the file is open simultaneously in both MT4 and Excel, there could be file locking problems.

david, i am referring to the ROS indi not CSM (but i see a similar issue with your spreadsheet above). see import data dialogue box screenshot below. note the extra spaces before and after the numbers, and the several extra spaces before each currency name.

i think the data can be cleaned up in excel but i am not having any luck just yet. if the values were separated by pure commas with no extra characters it would be easier.

note that i am doing a 'Get External Data' ' From Text' in order to bring in your data to an existing excel sheet, have it update automatically (excel grabs the new data from your file automatcally) and thus ongoing calculations can be made without manually importing the file into excel. this is a much more powerful way to use your data in excel vs. just opening the CSV manually in excel and i recommend you try it. Excel -> Data menu -> Get External Data -> From Text

cheers
mark

of course, just after i write that, i do the import again (after upgrading to Excel 2013) and the data looks clean. so ignore my comments but definitely check out importing via Get External Data.

when i get my spreadsheet together on this, i will post it. thanks again

cheers
mark

Mark,

The data is not formatted specifically for Excel. The only extraneous characters are spaces, which are added so that the headings, values etc all line up correctly if the file is loaded into a text editor.

I would expect Excel's import facility to have enough intelligence to strip spaces out, where necessary. If not, you can always highlight all of the 'value' columns and then press Ctrl-H to to a find/replace all, i.e. replace all spaces with an empty (null) field. I'm running Excel 2003 and the 'replace all' function works fine.

David

Excel 2013 is working fine with the data. not sure why i was having trouble in Excel 2007.

For those who are importing Hanover's CSV files via Get External Data in Excel, follow the steps below:









Then click Properties:




Then sort your new table by column 1 Smallest-to-Largest by clicking the dropdown arrow in the '#' column. Result should look like image below.
Hope this helps.

now, on to strategy. from purely visual backtesting, i am finding that:

1. with RS (because of its 0-100 scale), playing reversals from 0/100 extremes seems to work well.

1. with ROS, when currencies cross, interesting things seem to happen. but the wave extremes do not oftem go all the way to 0/100 so timing a reversal is a little more nebulous.

again my testing is manual and visual, not proven so these ideas are just starting points.

also David, on RS the timeline scale along the top for H1 period, the dates are wrong. notice in the screenshot how M30 and H4 end around 20:00 server time and the H1 ends around 6:00. it is happening even with the default settings of the Build Strength Preset file.

That's strange. It's always worked OK for me (see attached screenshot). A possible cause is missing br0ker data (check to see whether some pairs are missing H1 candles) or perhaps due to unusual market opening/closing times due to Xmas/New Year. You could also try rebooting your computer and reloading MT4.

I'm running Windows XP Pro 2002 SP3 and Pepperstone MT4 build 509.

Thanks for your observations regarding possible trading strategy.