On Balance Volume (OBV) indicator- a simple classic oscillator that displays price fluctuations based on changes in market volume over a certain period of time.
Principle cumulative volume, on the basis of which the instrument is built, was first introduced in 1946, but it gained wide popularity only in 1963, after the publication of the book D. Granville « A new strategy for the most profitable day trading in the stock market».
The impetus for the creation of the OBV indicator was the theory that a major change in volume always precedes a strong price move. The market does not have to react immediately.
For example, in situations where the most big players, owning certain information, begin to invest in assets that most of the other participants are trying to get rid of.
That is, the volume has already increased significantly, but the price movement vector has been directed downwards for some time by inertia. When a critical mass accumulates, the trend reverses sharply and becomes up. Small and medium investors, of course, immediately join it and make it even stronger. When large players decide to dispose of their assets in this way, a mirror situation arises.
The Balance Volume Indicator is included in the basic package of most popular platforms, including . To configure it, you need to set only three main parameters:
Independently calculate the value of the indicator OBV is not required, however, for general development, let's see how it is done, especially since the formula is not too complicated. If the closing price is higher than the previous period, its volume is added to the indicator value. If the price is less than its predecessor, then the volume of the current bar is subtracted. In this case, the result will be negative. When prices are identical, a straight line is displayed on the chart.
When calculating for Forex market tick volume indicators are applied.
The main disadvantage here is that the deal is equal to one tick, regardless of its value. Roughly speaking, buying/selling a million is equal to buying/selling a dollar. Of course, such leveling does not contribute to an objective assessment, but it must be taken for granted. That is why the indicator should be used only on daily, weekly and other long timeframes. There, the values of the volumes are balanced. It should be noted that in the analysis of OBV, as a rule, no special attention is paid to numerical values. The trader is guided solely by the behavior of the curve.
The indicator can be used:
When each new high / low of the price chart coincides with the corresponding extreme of the indicator, then we can talk about the presence of a stable up / down trend.
If the vector is directed upwards, you can open a deal to buy, if downwards - to sell.
Naturally, trend confirmation is not a signal for a trade deal, but simply useful information for reflection. In the flat state, the indicator does not go beyond the boundaries of a certain horizontal corridor for a long time and does not form successive peaks/troughs. There are no strong trends in the market during this period.
In cases where the OBV curve does not keep up with the price action, there is a “no confirmation” or divergence.
It occurs either at the top of a bull market or at the bottom of a bear market. In the first case, the chart reacts to the next price increase with a slight decrease. If the situation repeats at the next high, then the price movement is inertial and a reversal or correction will take place soon. This is a sign that you need to look for a moment to open sell positions.
If price and curve OBV synchronously update minimum after minimum, but at some point the latter starts to grow a little, it forms bullish divergence. This is the optimal time to open a buy trade. The downward movement continues by inertia, and soon the price will start to rise. Open positions are closed immediately after the vector change is confirmed by other technical analysis tools.
Divergence is the only, truly significant, independent signal of On Balance Volume, so you should treat it with due attention.
Often, indicator users draw levels on the chart overbought / oversold. The intersection of any of these lines can mean an early trend reversal. If the upper level is broken from below, a sell position is opened. If the lower limit is crossed from above, a buy deal is formed. At the same time, there is always a risk that the trend will be too strong, and the price will continue to move in the same direction.
Indicator OBV not recommended for short periods. Even on hourly timeframes, strong distortions appear, depriving the work of special practical meaning. We already talked about the reason for their occurrence above - a high probability of a serious discrepancy in the indicators of "money" and "tick" volumes.
As an independent analysis tool, OBV is rarely used.
It is usually used as a confirming indicator to determine the trend vector. The ideas on which the tool is based have long been applied in many other, more complex and effective programs. These include, for example, indexes cash flow and , and others.
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Platform: MetaTrader 4
Year: 2015
Manufacturer: ARGOlab
License type: Freeware / Donateware
Timeframe: any
ArgoGuardian is a free auxiliary advisor, the main purpose of which is to control open profit/drawdown on the account. When the desired profit or the maximum allowable drawdown is reached, the adviser closes all orders or sets a full lock (lock), deletes pending orders and stops, notifying the user with an e-mail message.
Optionally, after stopping, the adviser can release the autotrade button in the terminal so that other advisers can no longer open deals (mode AutotradeOFF=TRUE). Optionally, the EA can close all charts of the terminal except for its own, so that other EAs do not get under their feet and do not take it into their heads to open new orders while ArgoGuardian closes orders (mode CloseCharts=TRUE).
The EA can also send a warning to e-mail about a dangerous drawdown on the account (the drawdown value is set by the variables MaxDD_Email, MaxDDPerCent_Email, MaxDDEquity_Email).
An important feature of ArgoGuardian is the flexible setting of orders that it "grazes", i.e. takes into account when calculating profit / drawdown and, accordingly, closes / locks. With default settings ( Symbols = All, Magic = -1), the EA takes into account all open orders on the account. If you set the mode Symbols = ThisSymbol, then the EA will take into account orders only for the currency pair, on the chart of which the EA is attached. If you set the mode Symbols = MaxDDSymbol, then the EA takes into account orders only for the symbol with the maximum drawdown. Additional filtering can be done using the Magic variable. If Magic >=0 is set, then the EA only considers orders with this magic. By combining these two filters, you can selectively monitor drawdowns for different instruments and for different Expert Advisors on the account.
It is possible to use two (or more) copies of ArgoGuardian with different settings on one account. For example, one copy of ArgoGuardian will track the maximum drawdown for one instrument (Symbols = MaxDDSymbol) and another copy will keep track of the maximum drawdown on the entire account (Symbols = All).
The advantage of the adviser is also the flexible setting of the desired take profit and stop loss (= maximum allowable drawdown). You can specify take profit and stop loss in units of the deposit currency ( TProfit, MaxDD). And you can - as a percentage of the deposit balance ( TProfitPerCent, MaxDDPerCent). Finally, you can explicitly enter the desired equity value at which profit/loss will be fixed ( TProfitEquity, MaxDDEquity).
Settings:
Chapter logic
Sets which symbols (currency pairs) and magics to take into account and how to fix profits/losses.
Symbols(All/ThisSymbol/MaxDDSymbol) – filter, orders for which symbols to take into account. If Symbols = All, we take into account all symbols; if Symbols = ThisSymbol, we take into account orders only for the symbol, on the chart of which the Expert Advisor is attached; if Symbols = MaxDDSymbol, we take into account orders only for the symbol with the maximum drawdown.
Magic– filter, orders with which magics to take into account. If a< 0 (по умолчанию), учитываем все магики. Если >=0, then we take into account only orders with this magic.
UseLock(TRUE/FALSE) – if FALSE, then profit/loss is fixed by closing orders; if TRUE, then setting a lock (lock).
AutotradeOFF(TRUE/FALSE) – If TRUE, after fixing the profit/loss, the autotrade button in the terminal will be released.
CloseCharts(TRUE/FALSE) – If TRUE, all charts for active symbols, except for the current one, will be closed before taking profit/loss.
Chapter target profit
Sets the take profit, upon reaching which the profit will be fixed.
TProfit - take profit in units of the deposit currency, if 0 then disabled.
TProfitPerCent - take profit in % of the deposit, if 0 then disabled.
TProfitEquity – an explicit value of equity (equity), upon reaching which profit will be fixed, if 0 then disabled.
SendEmailOnTP (TRUE/FALSE) – send an email notification when a take profit is fixed.
Chapter stop Loss
Sets the stop loss value, upon reaching which the loss will be fixed.
MaxDD - maximum open drawdown in the deposit currency, if 0 then disabled.
MaxDDPerCent - maximum open drawdown in % of the deposit, if 0 then disabled.
MaxDDEquity – an explicit value of equity (equity), upon reaching which the loss will be fixed, if 0 it is disabled.
SendEmailOnSL (TRUE/FALSE) – send an email notification when a loss is recorded.
Chapter Email notification
Sets the value of the open drawdown, at which a warning message will be sent to the email.
MaxDD_Email – open drawdown value in the deposit currency, if 0 then disabled.
MaxDDPerCent_Email – open drawdown value in % of the deposit, if 0 then disabled.
MaxDDEquity_Email – Explicit value of funds (equity), if 0 then disabled.
For these options to work, .
This is an oscillator that shows the ability of "bulls" and "bears" in the Forex currency market to reach new maximum price values.
The indicator readings fluctuate between the extreme levels of -1 and +1. For each individual period, they are calculated according to the following formula: (Close - Open) / (High - Low). After calculation, the readings can be smoothed using any .
One of the most important properties of the Balance of Power indicator is the levels at which it forms tops and bottoms. During time, these peaks quite often approach the upper limit, but they never touch it. In a bear market, a mirror situation can be observed. If the indicator changes trend, you need to pay attention to the direction of the price.
To the virtues forex indicator Balance of Power can be attributed to a reliable determination of the presence of a trend and its strength, since the trend usually does not end the moment the indicator crosses the zero line. Of the relative disadvantages, it can be noted that in any case it is necessary to confirm the trend change on the price chart.
There are many ways to simplify your trading, but many still do not notice the opportunities offered to them modern world. To fix this, an indicator will be considered below - an information panel, this tool is available in many options, among which each trader will find something convenient for himself.
For those who know what they are looking for, we will immediately give a LINK to download the archive with the best information indicators, and now let's start reviewing this class of tools, listing and describing the best of them at the moment.
Every trader has probably come across trend, oscillator and other indicators, but what is an information group? These are the tools the main task which is to make visible important information about trading conditions that can greatly affect the final result.
In turn, Forex information indicators for mt4 are divided into the following main subgroups according to the specifics of their functioning:
The process of installing them does not differ in any specific features. After you decide to download Forex information indicators from the link above, you just need to unzip the archive, select the file of the desired instrument and move it to the "Indicators" folder of your Meta Trader 4 terminal. To do this, open it, click "File" at the top and go by "Open data directory". As a result, a new window will be displayed with the "MQL4" directory. Inside it is the folder you are looking for. After placing the necessary files in it, before using the information panels, the terminal must be turned off and on again.
The first type of information indicators, one way or another, is connected with time. These are tools that allow you to constantly see the time until the end of the candle formation, display trading sessions directly on the chart, and much more. Do them general description pointless, so let's go straight to summary each useful tool separately.
The first of the considered indicators is called b-clock, and its modified version TRO MODIFIED VERSION is presented in the archive. The purpose of this tool is to display a timer at the top left, which shows how much is left before the end of the formation of the current candle.
The second indicator is a complete information panel in mt4, displayed at the top right of the chart. It also shows the time parameters of the formed candles, and is also useful for displaying the current spread, swap and the value of the ATR trend strength indicator.
Another interesting representative of information panels is called Time Universal. With its help, you can constantly see how much time remains until the formation of the selected trading candle on the traded timeframe, even if the trader changes the display time period, for example, to view older timeframes.
In addition to the regular version, there is also a modified one with the Universal_fix add-on, which allows you to display this information panel not on the price chart, but in the window of another indicator.
The latest version of the popular information indicator i-Sessions-A allows you to display the current trading session on the market directly on the price chart.
Recently, it has also been pleased with other useful options, for example, now it has the number of points that the asset has passed over a certain period.
This informational indicator displays the market action time of the Asian-only session, indicating when it starts and ends. We have a detailed article on the site about working at this time of day, when you can scalp quite safely and confidently, receiving a decent income at the quietest time in the market.
The following type of Forex information indicators allows you not to forget about the release of important news, which is especially important for those who work intraday. Using one or another of the tools described below, a trader can display in a convenient way information about upcoming economic publications directly on the price chart, always staying up to date.
The best information panel for displaying news with tons of settings. In the archive above, you can download the current version at the moment, although this indicator is constantly being improved.
An alternative to the previous option is NewsInfo, another representative of quality news indicators that allows you to choose one of several top news agencies to receive data on upcoming economic publications.
A nice bonus of this auxiliary panel will be the function of disabling automatic trading of experts before the news, when increased volatility can lead to unpleasant and unexpected consequences.
For traders who like to cut off everything unnecessary, this information panel will come in handy. Its functionality allows you to set the display of only those news that are relevant for the currencies being traded. That is, if the work, for example, is not carried out on the Australian dollar, then the indicator will not display news on the AUD, so as not to distract from trading the main instruments.
When using news indicators, you should pay attention to several points:
If the appearance of a price impulse does not correspond to the data on the news release in the indicator, then you need to check the settings, paying attention to everything related to Hours, GMT, etc.
Success-oriented traders make sure to keep statistics of their trading, constantly analyzing the results financial transactions. Of course, now a very advanced set of services for collecting and analyzing statistics is offered, for example, by such a service as MyFxBook, etc. But it will be much more convenient to use information indicators that will display important data regarding profit or loss in money or percentage in real time.
Probably the most common indicator of this type, which allows you to display information about various trading aspects directly on the price chart panel.
This informer displays two curves in a separate window - one for changing the account balance, and the second for seeing how the equity drawdown has changed. Anyone who uses MyFxBook knows how the results of trading and the load on the deposit in its process are displayed in a convenient chart, which is very important when using martingale advisors and other systems without a clear stop.
Another interesting indicator of the group under consideration will help display statistics for individual trading approaches. Its main value lies in recognizing the results of various strategies, because often a trader on one account can test both automatic systems and trade manually, focusing on levels or some instruments.
The Profit Info panel assigns its own individual Magic Number to each trade, as a result of which it is easy to summarize the statistics on orders with the same designation in order to find out how effective they were.
Moreover, a trader can independently make notes next to each trading operation, easily then finding the trading operations he needs in order to study their result.
Here is a screenshot with the settings of the Profit Info information indicator, which allows you to roughly evaluate the capabilities of this super useful panel for every Forex trader.
Another popular group of dashboards helps to follow the right risk management, which, as you know, acts as one of the cornerstones of success in Forex. Only the careful actions of the trader, combined with the exact choice of the working volume for each transaction and taking into account the stop loss, can achieve a profitable mathematical expectation, which in the end will make you happy with a profit.
The indicators below allow you to get rid of the need for additional use of calculators, replacing them with convenient information panels, where the volume calculation can be based on:
When calculating, you can rely on the size of the allowed stop in points or percentages.
According to the name, this informer allows you to choose the optimal volume size for the opened position. Below in the screenshot you can see what parameters are set for the indicator. There is no need to be afraid that the panel will block the chart, since it can always be moved in the right direction.
As for the functionality, the indicator will independently calculate the allowable volume, based on the size of the stop and risks as a percentage of the deposit. Also, the trader will be able to see the cost of 1 point of the price movement, taking into account the selected volume, that is, he will receive all the information that the Forex calculator usually gives.
This informer is interesting because it can be used to easily determine the size maximum value lots under the selected conditions - type of asset, deposit size, leverage, etc. This may be necessary when accelerating a deposit or during news trading, when traders often enter the market with the maximum possible volume.
Scalpers and news traders know how important it is to control the size of the spread. After all, changing this important trading conditions leads to a significant increase in the cost of opening a position, which, in turn, can cause serious losses instead of the expected profit.
As a rule, in Forex, the spread tends to increase greatly at such moments:
For comparison, before the publication of US labor market data or the ECB meeting, the EUR/USD spread can expand to 20-50 points, while it usually tends to zero on accounts with market execution and very rarely exceeds 1 point!
Unlike Forex indicators, which display information about the spread in the form of points at the moment, this one allows you to evaluate the change in the spread in a separate window in the form of a chart. Thus, it is possible to trace when, how and in what periods the spread at a particular broker expanded.
The photo shows not only IND Monitoring itself, located under the price chart, but also an indicator for evaluating the spread at the current moment.
This tool shows not only the spread, but also the time left until the end of the candle on the selected interval. main feature indicator is that it can give a graphical warning about a greatly increased spread. That is, a trader who works intraday on Forex can safely trade without paying attention to the spread until he sees a signal from the information panel. It is very simple and convenient, and besides, flexible settings allow you to adapt Candle Spread to your tastes and preferences.
These are only the most popular indicators, but there are others, some of which, for example, allow you to save data on changes in the spread on history. This can be an extremely important aspect of trading analysis on your own or with an advisor.
Forex speculators who work on daily charts, focusing on medium-term trading, are heavily dependent on swaps, which are both positive and negative. For those who don't know, a swap is a fee for moving a position overnight. Moreover, it is not charged for weekends, but it can be charged 3 times in the middle of the week, as a rule, this happens on Wednesday.
To control this parameter, special information panels have been developed, some of which have other useful functionality.
A simple info panel for mt4 showing both swaps and more useful information by group of selected assets.
Another useful informer that is installed directly on the chart in mt4 to display, as the name suggests, both the spread and the swap.
Often, in order to filter a signal on a working timeframe, it is necessary to first study how things are on a larger time period. If the work is carried out with one or two assets, then this is not difficult, but when you need to quickly assess the situation for a dozen or even several dozen instruments, then everything becomes much more complicated.
This is where informational indicators come to the rescue, which directly in mt4 give useful hints as to what is happening on the higher timeframe.
A very popular indicator that displays additional timeframes in small previews right in the price chart window of the selected time period.
Another tool that allows you not only to control the current asset, but also to look at others at the same time. Below on the screen you can see how the pound dollar is additionally seen on the chart and currency pair euro against the Australian dollar.
Another useful information panel for mt4 displays quotes of other assets in a separate window under the price charts with important parameters regarding their movement.
Besides, in new version indicator, you can not only watch other charts, but also set the display of technical assistants for them. For example, for additional charts, you can set the display of stochastics on the information panel, which you can download in the archive from the link at the beginning of the article.
Below we will describe several complex solutions that help to assess the current Forex situation in terms of a number of important additional parameters.
This dashboard will help you control the time, spread, trend strength using ADR and more. Each of the useful options can be displayed or disabled as desired, also placing the data output itself in any of the corners of the graph in accordance with your preferences.
A very concise panel that allows you to display swap, spread, leverage and other trading parameters.
In addition to information indicators and panels for mt4, which directly affect the analysis of market situations, there is also additional software that a Forex trader should also have at hand.
This is a software product designed as an indicator for mt4 that allows you to take screenshots. Yes, you can use the usual third-party applications, but this is often inconvenient and takes some time, making you distracted. While there is an opportunity to instantly fix an interesting situation, failure or error of the terminal / broker, etc.
This tool will always inform the Forex trader about the events taking place on his trading account. This helps a lot in cases where a trader uses the services of PAMM accounts or auto-copy services, since you can check what is happening on the account at any time.
Such an informational indicator will be useful to anyone who uses grid robots or actively averages positions himself, since it always displays where the breakeven level is and how many points the price needs to pass in order to finally drain the trading account.
A convenient and useful informer that reports the value of each trading candle, reflecting this parameter in Forex points. Such information is extremely important for a number of trading systems, so such a data panel can be very useful.
Another analysis tool for working with grids that shows the break-even point.
If the robot has brought an account into a strong drawdown, then sometimes it is advisable to get into its work process by hand, setting take profits for all orders on your own to a level where they will at least bring zero income, but eliminate the risk of further holding trades.
Super useful info panel with tons of settings. Individual options can be set or removed as you wish.
An interesting tool that saves the trading history right on the chart. With it, you can see, not only where and when the transaction was opened, but also at what level the stop loss was placed, where the take profit was set, and so on.
The most popular and useful indicators are described above, as well as information panels for the mt4 Forex trading terminal, which you can download in one archive, and only then choose the tools that are suitable for your trading.
In many modern terminals, special modules have been added to analyze the dynamics of the balance and funds in the account. Unfortunately, the MT4 terminal is outdated in this regard, but the balance indicator can easily compensate for such shortcomings.
First of all, let's figure out why it is needed at all, because every trader himself knows very well what is happening on his account, and if it is necessary to evaluate historical data, you can always build a statement and export the data to Excel, and then study them in any available statistical way.
Of course, if only one trading account is considered, you can go in such a primitive way, but if you need to study the situation on several accounts, then you will have to spend a lot of time systematizing and analyzing information.
Why pay so much attention to the balance sheet? There are enough reasons, in fact, from analyzing your own trading accounts on which robots trade, to studying the situation on the accounts of traders offering trust management services (in this case, the investor gets access to the history of transactions using the investor password).
Equity.mq4 - the most best indicator balance to date
Finding a balance indicator today is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. The fact is that many algorithms that are in the public domain are either absolutely useless, or work with errors (the equity is not calculated correctly), or even stopped working after updating MT4 to 600 build.
The last problem did not bypass the “Equity” algorithm created on the MQL4 portal in 2007 (it was written by a user under the nickname “surgeon”), but the programmers quickly fixed the errors that appeared during compilation, and today it can be downloaded under the name “equity_v7_mod”. The expert looks like this:
The seventh version did not appear immediately, but about a year after the first developments. It took into account all the wishes of users and fixed some shortcomings (unfortunately, not all), so we do not recommend trying to revive earlier versions - you definitely won’t be able to find any hidden advantages in them.
Setting up the balance indicator
In the settings window, the first variable is called Only_Trade and is designed to display only trading results, i.e. if you enable the “true” value, the indicator will display on the chart the net result of trading for the selected period, and not the balance dynamics.
We recommend that you always enable this setting. If left false, then not only will the result be distorted due to withdrawals and deposits, but also the entire history of transactions will need to be downloaded, and many brokers are known to archive and compress this data. Plus, if you work only with the result chart, you can choose any period in the account history (last day, week, month, etc.).
The result of trading on the account looks good, but judging by the discrepancy between the balance and equity graphs, the work is being done without stops (which is not always a bad thing, because a lot still depends on the strategy). This is how you can easily evaluate the work style of a trader or advisor through an investment password in one action, without studying hundreds of transactions from the report.
If you enable the Only_Buys and Only_Sells variables, then the balance indicator will show the result from sales and purchases separately, but it should be borne in mind that two Expert Advisors will have to be installed on the main window, one for tracking long positions, and one for short positions. Let's go back to our test case:
Obviously, in this case, the strategy is universal, and, apparently, a trend one, since during periods of strong price growth, the total profit on long positions increases, and in a clear bearish trend, short positions bring profit - this is an undoubted advantage of the strategy.
Drawdown periods create confusion, in particular, for long positions, the loss increased just before the trend reversal, i.e. there is an attempt to catch a reversal. If such situations are not uncommon, then it is better for the trader to urgently demand an explanation of whether this is really part of the strategy, or the result of errors. We draw your attention to the fact that such nuances are imperceptible on a regular “state”, which creates fertile ground for manipulations when advertising projects.
Also, the balance indicator can display data on drawdown and profit factor, for this you need to set the value "true" opposite the Show_Info variable. One fact should be noted here - for the general history, the maximum drawdown is shown twice as much as the real value, and the profit factor is half as much.
I would like to attribute this deviation to a feature of the algorithm, they say, some special non-standard profitability estimate is applied, but since the drawdown must always be the same value, an error clearly crept into the code, especially when importing not the entire history, but only a certain period, the result calculation converges with the standard report from the terminal.
What other possibilities does the balance indicator have?
Above we have listed the most popular settings, but the functionality of equity_v7_mod is much wider. For users who prefer robot trading to manual speculation, the Only_Magics variable will be useful, with which you can set the magic number of orders that a particular adviser works with.
Checked – the balance indicator “pulls out” these orders from the general history, and ignores the rest when calculating equity. Thus, you can work with several Expert Advisors on one account, i.e. now it is not necessary for the purity of the experiment to allocate a separate account for each robot.
The same applies to the Only_Symbols variable, with which you can set the ticker of a trading instrument for analysis. If you enter, for example, EURUSD into the corresponding field, the indicator will show the result only for the EUR/USD pair. Please note that you must exactly copy the name of the instrument from the terminal, i.e. if there is a “#” sign before the ticker (#USDX, for example), it will also have to be indicated in the field.
The Only_Current setting performs a similar function, if you select “true” opposite its name, the volume indicator will display the total result for the total number of deals for the instrument on the chart of which it is set.
Let's repeat once again - using Only_Symbols, you can select any instrument for analysis (for example, put the indicator itself on the gold chart, while allowing data import only for EUR/USD), and the Only_Current variable works only with orders specific to the current chart. Which option to use is up to the trader to decide.
And the last “bonus” from the developers is a sound signal when a critical drawdown is reached. It is configured using the Alert_Drowdown variable, but here you should be aware of the problem with displaying the true drawdown value, although if the Expert Advisor overestimates it in case of an error, then this will definitely not make it worse.
Concluding the review, let us recall one more feature of such indicators - after installing it on the working window, it is recommended to update the chart, for example, if the equity chart is built on H1, set the algorithm to the hourly one, then switch to any other timeframe and return H1 back. After this operation, the result will definitely be correct. Source:
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