Thread: 4TF Bars: Indicators and Ideas

Hello everyone,
I am a new member of this community and I must say I am superbly impressed by the members of this community not only for their knowledge but also for their dedication and sincerity towards trading as a business.
In the country where I come from (India) trading is viewed as just another form of gambling and there's no place for trading as a profession in the society. And for the past seven years I am trying to establish myself as a full time trader and my quest continues till date.

For good six years and a half I have been a user of Metastock. But the day I got my hands on MT4 I realized what I have been missing.The capabilities of this platform are amazing and possibilities are endless .

For past few days I have been browsing this forum and toying around with indicators posted and developed by fellow members here.After hours and hours of backtesting I came to realize that 4TF bars are very powerful indicators as they combine power of multiple timeframes on one chart. And IMHO they deserve a separate thread as they are quite different from other MTF indicators.
This thread will serve two purposes:
1. A one stop collection and refrence to all the 4TF bars available.
2. A place to share ideas for 4TF bars and try to develop them as useful tools in trading. Help and guidance of fellow coders (Brax64,Malden,CJa and many more who I don't know yet. Take a bow you all,you are doing a great job) requested.

I am sharing my ideas here which I believe can prove to be powerful indicators.

1. 4TF Chinkou Span Bar: One of the most underrated indicators is chinkou span of ichimoku system.This bar will track chinkou span across 4 timeframes and display the respective positions of chinkou span on those time frames. Green if the span is closing above the price 26 periods back and red if below it.

2. 4TF Price channel stop: Price channel stop is one of the most useful indicator for re-entry in a prevailing trend.If someone can develop it into a 4TF bar then I am pretty sure it will open quite profitable re-entries.

These two ideas were in my mind since I saw the 4TF HAS bar.Your thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

PS: For the convenience of fellow members I and attaching the ichimoku for chinkou span and a modified price channel stop indicator which I use for re-entries.

Regards
Sahilsri

Here's an image to demonstrate how price channel stop can be used as a re-entry.

Regards
Sahilsri

Hello Sahalsri,

I like your initiative. As a suggestion, you should bundle up your system into a Zip file and include all the source code of the indicators and the template file that is used to create your screen.

As you are new to Metatrader, there is a characteristic of Multi Time Frame indicators that you should be aware of. Most MTF's use the iBarShift to get and set the correct bar values for the higher time frame and map it back into the appropriate bar of the lower time frame. The missing interval bars on the lower time frame are interpolated by Metatrader. This can lead to a restating of the interval bars should the indicator be changing colors. This is not repainting. For example, if you are using a H1 chart and apply an H4 MTF indicator, there will be up to 3 interpolated bars that can change due to the 4 hour interval of the higher indicator as it gets mapped into every fourth bar on the chart. Thus, when you look at a chart, the higher indicator might seem to be issuing perfect signals when in fact, the signals can be delayed up to n hours in real time.

This has let me to conclude that using current period indicators with a long period is often better than using a MTF indicator on a higher time frame but with a shorter period. A 44 period Gann SSL on a one hour time frame can be used to approximate a 11 period Gann SSl on a 4 hour time frame with out the interpolation problem which generally occurs when there is a color shift from green to red or vice versa. In the attached screen shot, the 4 hour Gann SSl is in red/green and the 1 hour in aqua/blue.

Hope this helps
TzuMan

I like the ideas presented here a lot. Let's see how we could prefect it. And yes a zip file would be very helpful. I have worked well with the GANN SSL TF+1 but have never used multi-time frame indicators and TF4 bars. Best from Switzerland!

Hello TzuMan,

Are you working off primarily the GANN SSL then? I am using the GANN SSL + TF1 (plus 1 timeframe!) giving me one single line. I would appreciate if you could let us know how to construct a chart showing two GANN SSLs like shown on your chart!

Originally Posted by Tzuman

Hello Sahalsri,

I like your initiative. As a suggestion, you should bundle up your system into a Zip file and include all the source code of the indicators and the template file that is used to create your screen.

As you are new to Metatrader, there is a characteristic of Multi Time Frame indicators that you should be aware of. Most MTF's use the iBarShift to get and set the correct bar values for the higher time frame and map it back into the appropriate bar of the lower time frame. The missing interval bars on the lower time frame are interpolated by Metatrader. This can lead to a restating of the interval bars should the indicator be changing colors. This is not repainting. For example, if you are using a H1 chart and apply an H4 MTF indicator, there will be up to 3 interpolated bars that can change due to the 4 hour interval of the higher indicator as it gets mapped into every fourth bar on the chart. Thus, when you look at a chart, the higher indicator might seem to be issuing perfect signals when in fact, the signals can be delayed up to n hours in real time.

This has let me to conclude that using current period indicators with a long period is often better than using a MTF indicator on a higher time frame but with a shorter period. A 44 period Gann SSL on a one hour time frame can be used to approximate a 11 period Gann SSl on a 4 hour time frame with out the interpolation problem which generally occurs when there is a color shift from green to red or vice versa. In the attached screen shot, the 4 hour Gann SSl is in red/green and the 1 hour in aqua/blue.

Hope this helps
TzuMan

can you share the indicators and template?

I do agree absolutely that it's mandatory to trade in agreement with more then a single timeframe and Tzuman rightly pointed out a problem using conventional MTF indicators; a good improvement is, IMHO, to use at least interpolated MTF indicators, they can smooth the so called "repainting effect".
My personal approach is to use "multichart" indicators, like those one coded by Stratman (pipware software, goggle it and you'll find it. Actually now he's releasing his indicators for free... his website deserve a visit!)
Have a look at the picture to have an idea what I mean...

my 2 cents...

Regards

You might take a look at some of these too : Multi pair indicators
Made them 4 years ago but it seems that they are still "in current" ...

Or, for all time frames of some symbol things like this : Multi pair indicators (those were made about the same time too) They (the "all ..." series) are scattered in the multi time frame thread mostly ...

Originally Posted by mladen

You might take a look at some of these too : Multi pair indicators
Made them 4 years ago but it seems that they are still "in current" ...

Or, for all time frames of some symbol things like this : Multi pair indicators (those were made the same time too) They (the "all ..." series) are scattered in the multi time frame thread mostly ...

hi mladen

do you know any of 4tf indicator do alert if all 4tf have same direction which is working?

I do find an system at another non active forum that has it but does not seems working.

I find the file but could not found the system that was using the file...

as file below it does code with alert, but for my meta4 platform does not seems working

Try this one
It will alert you when all 4 parabolic SARs of current bar are the same. It will alert only nce per direction (so, if for example, it alert you that all are aligned up, it will not alert again till all 4 are aligned down and vice versa). Parabolic SAR used in this one is a correct one (the one that avoids the error that a built in parabolic SAR has in it)

regards

Originally Posted by mtuppers

hi mladen

do you know any of 4tf indicator do alert if all 4tf have same direction which is working?

I do find an system at another non active forum that has it but does not seems working.

I find the file but could not found the system that was using the file...

as file below it does code with alert, but for my meta4 platform does not seems working