New Free Indicator, Proprietary, Now Open Source Contribution

UPDATE January 25th, 2016.

Now that there have been a few comments and one indi repost, I have decided to make a couple of code adjustments and repost the new and improved version. Fortunately "I was in the flow" this morning and was able to edit it in about 10 minutes. I am not a natural coder or a full time coder so it's like pulling teeth for me.

In any case, thanks to FerruFX for your initial comment, I added the ability to select the desired chart time period for the inputted look back period on ANY open chart (which should default to the current chart timeframe), and in theory should display the indi on any chart based on any separate TF you prefer. Please note, I have not tested the accuracy or usability of this feature so use it at your own risk. In theory, it should compute, however, if you use a lower TF computation on a higher timeframe chart, in theory it should also repaint in that case, so be careful. If used on the current or higher TF, it should not repaint in theory. Those who are familiar with MT4 coding, please feel free to have a look at the code, and modify and comment as you wish.

Thanks to Inceptionist for having a look. Hope it works out for you.

Thanks to Todd Anderson for reposting. I have included the "new" versions below. So, if you can or wish to remove your upload, it will be less confusing for others that come here later and download the indi.

Thank you again FerruFX, if another TF than the current one is selected, the MTF calculation is wrong, so only use the "current" TF calculation when placed on any chart. The issue here is that the indicator mustn't be set with any other TF than the one it is applied on.


Finally, it's a little redundant but must be said: Use the indicator at your own risk. No warranties or guarantees or claims of profitability or usability are offered or intended. Although you are not buying this indi, Caveat Emptor.

ORIGINAL POST(S) BELOW *******************************

I recently created a custom histogram indicator that measures price against recent HH and LL, specifically where price is compared to the MID of recent HH and LL, where recent HH LL is defined by the Higher/Lower of the last X number of bars or 2X bars, whichever is Higher/Lower, and displayed as percent away from mid.

It's a variation of mid of HH and LL since it compares the higher of HH or LL against a period and twice the number of bars back to avoid whipsaws.

I used to display this against lines on a chart, but made a histogram out of it and it looks interesting.

It looks good at gauging trend strength and general turns (see image below).

The name of the indicator is BAM, which is an acronym for "Below and Above Mid".

Ways to use it:
1. To see general trend on longer TFs (more than 60 bars back).
2. To see market vs mid of HH LL range at any time.
3. It can tell you a possible trend has just started.
4. It can tell you when to possibly stay out against a trend.

Ways not to use it:
1. What it can't do is pick absolute tops and bottoms.
2. It can't tell you when to exit.

I'm giving this indi away here as an open source MT4 file for the sake of making it an open source development and project for those who are interested.

I am currently spending more time developing other ideas, but thought that others could benefit from as this, and potentially develop it further too, so I decided to post it here and see what can become of it.

I am giving it away here on FF for 3 reasons:

1. To see if anyone can benefit from this now as is.

2. To see if there are others that could develop it more and make it better, perhaps as a MTF indi and perhaps to include a MathMin/MathMax feature to make it display changes in stepwise fashion.

3. To see if anyone is interested in making an EA based on this or a derivative of it.

Feel free to try it, test it, use it and post your input and feedback for others to see and develop.

On a technical note, for a simple indi, it does seem to eat some resources, perhaps because of comparing every tick to potentially changing HHs and LLs. Perhaps someone could make a simple mod to alleviate this.

Also, the indi does not repaint as far as I can tell. Again please confirm and use carefully just in case.

As always, use at your own risk, no warranties or guarantees or claims are provided. If you use it, you assume any and all risk by using it.

Image below with 3 BAMS displayed...12, 60, and 120 smoothing.



NOTE (thanks FerruFX)... The files below are hard coded with PERIOD_M1 for 1minute charts only. They will not work as intended on higher TFs. Feel free to recode it/modify it etc to suit your charts. I will not be modifying them or customizing them for individual requests. And again, use the indicator at your own risk. No warranties or guarantees or claims of profitability or usability are offered or intended. Although you are not buying this indi, Caveat Emptor.

After a combined 120+ downloads in 25 hours with less than a 1% download to comment ratio. I've decided to terminate the d/l.

I'm pretty sure it will be offered elsewhere online by others taking credit for it and releasing it for free or for fee.

In my over 20 years in the industry, I'd never seen an indi that does what I described above, so I ended up making it to see how it would display and thought that "open sourcing" it would open up more ideas for it.

However, by the lack of comments, I can see that there are more takers instead. Slightly disappointed but not surprised. Was not looking for recognition or praise, just open commentary and potential cooperation for further development. There are those who would say, "but you only posted a day ago." To that I say, if this was a post about a fabulous ea or trading system, there would be 10x the activity in half the time.

I'm leaving this post up as a record of my creation of the indi for future reference, so there is no doubt where it originated.

Sorry to others that came here looking for something for nothing. Eventually within a few months I'm sure this indi will most likely be posted on other threads or sites by the same name or a different name.

I may decide to post the indi again in the future, but for now it's no longer available.

Indicator updated and re-uploaded January 25th, 2016.

Disclaimer: This BAM indi is NOT designed to catch market tops and bottoms and exact turns. But it may indicate a trend/strong trend and recent change in trend. Also, it DOES NOT indicate the most important thing in trading...when to exit. Again, no guarantees, warranties, claims of usability, or proper coding/programming are presented or made with this indi, use it at your own risk. Use it only on demo and if you feel comfortable using it live and have good results, please share your experiences using it here.

Interesting...

Pipologist, are you aware that your calculation is only right if the indicator is applied on M1 chart ?

Nice catch, most of my testing/indicating is done on one minute charts. I could have had another reason for the PERIOD_M1 coded instead of 0, but otherwise can't remember or think of why I did that.

Feel free to change as you wish. It's open source.

I'm gonna leave it as is and allow others to modify/repost as wanted/needed. It also explains why it doesn't render on larger TFs. As I said most indis I only use on 1 and 5mn, for upper TFs I just eyeball the PA.

Thank you for the heads up though.

If you keep the PERIOD_M1 coded, you should warn users right in post #1 to use it only on M1 chart. Otherwise they will get wrong information to take decision in their trading.

Please don't get me wrong, no disrecpect intended ... Just want to avoid your followers to misunderstand what the indicator is showing.

Thank you. PM sent.

I downloaded your indicator and tested it just to make sure there are no repaints. Well, so far so good...I'd like to thank you for your hard work. It looks good and I'm currently thinking of using it as a filter or confirmation with some old strategies of mine...Best Regards

Its quite unfortunate that you decided to pullout the holy grail due to lack of commentsnot sure about the skepticism but i think you should invest on the positives not the other way round.

New version posted. See post #1

First. It's not the holy grail. Not even close, never mentioned it was. The original posted indicator wasn't pulled because of skepticism. It was pulled because of lack of participation. I am interested in other people implementing and contributing, and other ways to use this and make it better. In addition to others contributing EAs, or EA ideas that others can work on...OPEN SOURCE COLLABORATION.

I know it's a good indi and I know some others could use it. I just don't have the time or trading style right now to use it as a primary. But, I do give it a look and prefer it over the common stoch, rsi, macd and other standard indis. I also know that with further implementation, it could possibly be used in an EA scenario (probably as a confirmation or trend validation indi).

The main reason I initially pulled it was because I wanted to avoid dealing with some certain folks which are:
a. stealers/takers/those that would resell or repackage it as their own in the future,
b. time wasters that give recommendations, but have never coded or ever traded successfully, and trade demo all day, yet offer all the solutions in the world.
c. boneheads that trade blindly and wildly with it with large sums of cash and lose money and blame the indicators, eas, brokers, data, whatever, anything other than themselves.

However, once I posted it, I realized that the cat was already out of the bag.

The only positive(s) that I can think of are that someone who is looking for this kind of thing may benefit from it and avoid a bad trade or stay out of trading against a strong move and thus, save or make some profitable trades with it. Or, someone that can't make Stoch, RSI and MACD work for them, have some success with this indi.

Other than that, I'm not looking for recognition, validation, followers, subscribers or anything that has to with making me feel better.

I have nothing to sell, and I don't have time to deal with checking into a online forum frequently to check messages.

This is simply a case of putting out a piece of work that I am not using and will probably not use too much on it's own in the future, and thinking that someone could benefit from it, and in the meantime, other ideas from others could could from it, which in turn might lead to a better trading idea. Since many traders use a form of midpoints, it's nothing unique or niche, it's just a different way of looking at prices against changing midpoints. Nothing special. Yet at the same time, a very different *until now* way of looking at it and measuring it visually.

Ok, Good to have you back on the idea you started the thread. Loaded the indicator to chart, it works fine traders will benefit from it and the calculations are great. Thanks for the job, boneheads will do appreciate this one, i can tell

You still miss the point that if another TF than the current one is selected, the MTF calculation is wrong. You must convert the "i" in your loop into the related shift in the selected TF.

3 ways to observe this indicator with 3 examples. Feel free to come up with your own ways to use/not use this indi and post your observations and experiences using it. Please demo it first and remember nothing is guaranteed to work every time, especially this one. This one does need some mental and market analysis to go with it, you should understand the concepts of increasing and decreasing ranges, which in turn, increase/decrease the market's distances from measured HHs and LLs and corresponding midpoints, this indicator attempts to measure that behavior.

1. One way to observe this indi is in a strong intra day trend that lasts a half day or a day...there were several especially the last 2 weeks, for this kind of observation I have noticed a 240 lookback on placed on a 1 minute chart with a "current" bar calculation will stay with a long intra day move. It will not catch the beginning or the end, but when this kind of move is in progress, it can cost to trade against it.

2. Another way is to use a shorter lookback of 60 and observe the strengh, accuracy and duration/type of move. For example, on a strong trending day with strong pullbacks like yesterday (Friday)...it gives clear signals on both sides of the market for several pips each. This is the "typical" buy up, sell down, type of moves, HOWEVER, the market RARELY trades this cleanly. This was also yesterday on the 1minute chart, lookback of 60, and "current" calc.

3. This morning is more typical, before a stronger move settles in either direction. This type of market behavior exhibits developing stronger swings with very late and/or very short pullbacks that are weaker than the prevailing moves. Until the market pullsback and changes direction, this could indicate that a stronger intraday trend is beginning to develop, unless the market changes to scenario #2 with stronger pullbacks or #1 with stronger, lengthier intra day trends (see how this compares to longer/stronger trends like Friday's). This is the same 60 period lookback on a placed and calculated on a 1minute chart.

Use the indicator at your own risk. No warranties or guarantees or claims of profitability or usability are offered or intended. Although you are not buying this indi, Caveat Emptor.

Thank you. Yes I understand now what your are saying, and it explains why the indi still functions funky when comparing a calc based on another TF.

Converting the "i" in your loop into the related shift in the selected TF, is something that I have not learned to implement properly and I don't have enough coding examples in my portfolio to copy and past from. It's a coding weakness of mine, so MTF time shift coding, and coding to read data from, for example, just from the opening for specific time blocks only, eludes me and I look for other coding examples to try to implement it cleanly and effectively, without screwing up other features of the inid.

You've responded and provided help very graciously on several threads I started looking for help, so you can ascertain my level of coding proficiency. Since I am not good at that particular coding function/skill, am not going to attempt to do it on this or spend hours into days perfecting it just for this indi right now. Again, I learn organically as I apply it to my own EAs.

I am glad that you posted the observation regarding the TF shift problem and am not asking you or others spend/waste your time fixing it, because I know that takes more than a few minutes even for experienced coders. You in particular code MT4 for others as a business, so I don't expect or wish that you fix it, but appreciate you taking the time to look at it and make a suggestion. Maybe another coder here that loves coding, is good and fast, has time and doesn't mind working on this open source, can tackle the mistaken code. If anyone is inclined to fix that and post it as an updated version I am sure there are others that will use it. Personally, since I don't have the skills to do that and since I use exclusively the 1mn and 5m to enter trades it's not a critical thing to me.

Clue for you : use the iBarShift() function ... to find the related shift in the selected TF.

What would be the difference between your indicator and using a moving average set to Median Price, (HL/2)?

Or even better, using a mean average rather than a midpoint...Typical Price (HLC/3), since you are including a look back?

Is it necessary to reinvent tools that already exist? or is yours completely different?

I'm clueless, really, unless I start really digging in. Coding is extremely counter intuitive for me and what takes pros minutes/seconds takes me hours and days and weeks to figure out and code cleanly. Unfortunately, I don't have time to dig into it now. I really don't even have the time to respond to the thread, I should not be spending more than few minutes max a week on this. Thank you for the clue, something to investigate later.

Good question. You could have a point assuming your observations are correct and that the indi is calculating the exact same or very similar thing.

If it is doing the same thing, it's just another way of looking at the same beautiful girl in a different photo.

However, I'm not so sure it's the same as a moving average. If it is, then I spent a lot of time reinventing existing tools that are available for free. Kinda like going to the local home improvement store to buy the latest high tech hammer, only to realize that I already have several at tome in my toolbox. Stupid me.

Answer to your question: I honestly don't know if they are the same, I don't think they are, didn't bother to look. If they are, then I'm a bonehead.

Otherwise, I'll let others answer the question any differences.

Simple answer without being rude...If you use it and it works for you great. If not, please disregard it.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind this BAM indi is NOT designed to catch market tops and bottoms and exact turns. But it may indicate a trend/strong trend and recent change in trend. Also, it DOES NOT indicate the most important thing in trading...when to exit. Again, no guarantees, warranties, claims of usability, or proper coding/programming are presented or made with this indi, use it at your own risk. Use it only on demo and if you feel comfortable using it live and have good results, please share your experiences using it here.

Just out of curiosity, I placed a 240 simple median MA on a 1mn chart against the 240 BAM on the same chart. They are not the same, but very close, close enough to validate your observation. So I understand your point and appreciate the input. Thank you.

Try changing the "CLOSE" portion to Median or Typical and see how that draws. I am not trying to be rude either. Like you, I get wild ideas and chase them to the weeds and then step back to find out if there is any merit or not. I also rely on other people's opinions, whether I agree or not, because I know I make mistakes sometimes, and I also like to make improvements when possible.

If it is the same though, then I have a corrected fisher that will draw arrows and give you popups that is the same thing as price moving across the moving averages. While some people think it is bad because it repaints, lol, but it is actually quite accurate, which is why it repaints. DUH. Anyway, it might do the same thing.

MaxH = High[Highest(NULL,0,MODE_HIGH,period,i)];
MinL = Low[Lowest(NULL,0,MODE_LOW,period,i)];
price = (High[i]+Low[i])/2;
Value = 0.5*2*((price-MinL)/(MaxH-MinL)-0.5) + 0.5*Value1;
Value=MathMin(MathMax(Value,-0.999),0.999);
ExtBuffer0[i]=0.25*MathLog((1+Value)/(1-Value))+0.5*Fish1;

I tried to match your screenshot for EURUSD 1M on 22 Jan with a Period 240 Fisher.

As said earlier, the calculation of your MTF is completly wrong. Let's take your example of a 240 BAM on a M1 chart :

When the indicator is plotting the histogram on a M1 bar (example 60 candles back or 1 hour ago), it uses the H4 value 60 bars back (according to your coding) ... which is about 2 weeks ago. Can you see the issue ?

By re-reading your post above, I may have misunderstood. If the 240 is the BAM "look back" period applied to the current M1 chart, so that's fine. My statement above is only when the MTF is used (240 = H4).