[SCL] True Market Structure

4 oct 2020

See market structure at a glance with Higher Highs and Lower Lows. Bullish/Bearish/Ranging market bias is automatically derived. Optionally get alerted for breaks in market structure. Uses true Local Highs/Lows instead of simply the highest/lowest "pivot" for x bars. Can be useful as a support for learning market structure or for alerts for a change in structure while you're not at the computer.

5 oct 2020

Notas de prensa

Fixed some broken logic. It confirms Highs and Lows better now. This is why you keep the debug handy, kids.

5 oct 2020

Notas de prensa

Updated comments to match the fixed functions.
Note to the Pinescripters: I was having problems accessing past states of variables within functions using [1], which is why you'll see the workaround with variable_1, passing in a hardcoded [1].

7 oct 2020

Notas de prensa

Fixed a case where we could confirm fractals out of sequence.
Added a new setting: "Use Short Label Text"; off by default. This makes the label text much shorter and people will probably prefer it after they get used to the indicator.
Removed the setting to display market bias in labels, because it's superseded by the new setting.

Note about rogue wicks
If we get a candle with a high wick but a normal close, after a Local High but before that Local High is confirmed by the appropriate close, the high wick will never be counted as a Local High, even if it ends up coming in sequence after a Local Low.
Basically, candidates for Local Highs are only accepted AFTER the previous Local High is confirmed (or on the very same bar), and I'm probably going to keep it that way. Not only would it be extremely time-consuming to code and test doing it differently, I'm not convinced it would be the right thing to do.
Same thing goes for Lows.
This case is quite rare (I don't even have a screenshot handy). Also, note that forcing confirmations with a low number could change this behaviour and confirm the wick.
For any other cases where you think the script isn't picking out Highs and Lows correctly, please do drop a comment with a screenshot of the chart and your current settings.

7 oct 2020

Notas de prensa

Fixed the spelling on the short label text. Hat tip to crossc for letting me know

7 nov 2020

Notas de prensa

Simplified the display mode inputs. There's only one colour scheme now, which is according to market bias. I think that's more useful than just red/green.

Added a minimalist mode, because having all the labels displayed when using the indicator regularly cluttered up the chart a bit. This mode only shows the most recent High and Low (the code that deletes old labels might be interesting if you need to script with labels printed in arbitrary locations). The defaults are the same as before.

11 nov 2020

Notas de prensa

Added a new display option. You can show only those breaks in market structure that are reversals, or you can show both reversal and continuation breaks.

For fun: find an asset that trends nicely and hide everything except reversal breaks.

23 nov 2020

Notas de prensa

Attempting to fix a user-reported issue with Bearish Breaks.

7 dic 2020

Notas de prensa

+ Added a label to show the current market bias, with three settings: Short Text, Full Text, and Off. The label is coloured according to the bias.

+ Added an option to fill the background with the market bias colour.

With the range of visualisations now available, you can see market structure in as much or as little detail as you want, with the best chance of avoiding visual conflict with whatever other indicators you might be using.

+ Fixed the market bias to be set properly on breaks. Needed now it's more visible!

+ Increased the maximum number of labels shown to 100. If you want to do historical analysis, you can increase this number up to the system limit of 500 manually.

+ Added lines that show where price needs to close in order to flip market bias to bullish or bearish. You *could* also add lines to show the close needed to flip to ranging. If people want this feature I might add it.
NOTE: This feature repaints in the sense that it extends the line back in time to the High or Low that set that price.
Importantly, it can change intra-candle. A candle close is needed to confirm a Local High/Low, and while a candle is open it uses the current price as the "working close". So if we are in the very first candle of a changed market bias, the most recent Local High/Low is actually waiting for the current candle to close in order to be confirmed. If the current candle then reverses, the line will revert back to using the previously confirmed High/Low. Although this looks jarring when it happens, it's technically correct. Coding it to always use a High/Low that's confirmed on close instead is probably not worth the effort and would be less useful most of the time. The general principle is the same as for most indicators - for the current candle, Things Can Change until it's closed.

If you have questions, please read the full description of the settings in the top part of the script first.

8 jul 2021

Notas de prensa

New feature: Option to display the break of the line that shows where a close would need to be in order to break the current market structure. Thanks to user Meshidorin for the suggestion.
Updated the colours so that you won't get compilation warnings from TradingView because of the impending deprecation of "transp".

9 ago 2021

Notas de prensa

Thanks to @dalescher for a fix to the price on the label for the price needed for a bullish or bearish break

19 sept 2021

Notas de prensa

Minor update: Fixed the alert text for Breaks.

26 dic 2021

Notas de prensa

Added max_bars_back=500 to get around the issue where keeping the last two labels only wasn't working.
Hopefully this addition doesn't cause any other problems.

27 ago 2022

Notas de prensa

Updated to v5.
Fixed a bug where the break line was not getting displayed if the High/Low was very far away. This may uncover other bugs in dealing with edge cases.
Speaking of bugs, I can't figure out why the label offset isn't working, so if anyone knows how to fix that, do comment.

1 sept 2022

Notas de prensa

I've tried many ways of getting the labels to display in the future. All of them *should* work, and they all seem to sort of work, in that the label displays further in the future the higher you set the input, but it never exactly matches. For example, for certain values of input, the labels don't move.
If anyone has a method that compiles and is tested not to have this problem, do let me know.