iVar BrowserJimmy wrote: Wed Apr 03, 2019 9:23 pm This is Mrtools's iVar Browser for MT4.
It's a beautiful indicator but a rather complex tool (a bit too complex for me), but according to my notes saved at the time, the indicator can be used to display the trend's strength and revolves around the 0.5 line.
Unfortunately, this is one indicator that I didn't save much information on at the time and several sources have different names for it ranging from "Flat Trend detector" to "Variation Index" to "An advanced ADX type of indicator".
Perhaps when Mrtools is free this week he could sum it up for us if we have questions on how to use it but for now, I'll just leave it here in our trend indicators thread
Originally Mladen did the browser version, this is his explanation how this version works::
It takes all the time frames and calculates nBarsvalues of iVar, and then :
- calculates the percentage of bars that are above the required level(this point works on nBarssample, so it is probably the weakest point since, for the sake of the speed it is advisable to use smaller nBarsparameter as well as the lack of data (EURUSD on monthly chart has some 300 bars, so it is far from being a representative sample))
- calculates the duration (in bars) of the current "state" : if the current value is above levelthen it calculates how many bars ago it crossed up and if the current value is bellow levelit calculates how may bars ago it crossed down. Did not convert the duration in bars to time since clearly higher time frames would be always in front of the list if the duration in time was considered
Sorting can be done (with SortByparameter) :
1 : sorted by current values
2 : sorted by duration of the state
all the rest : sorted by the percentage of iVar values above level
And the original author of the iVar indicator(variation index) Llnur Lksanov
Nowadays, the most popular representatives of the fractal time functions are the financial time series. The fractal structure of these series is well-known and
aсcording to Mandelbrot there is a "rewording of the famous market saying that the movement of stocks and currencies is independent of the time scale and the
price. An observer can't tell if the information refers to the weekly, daily or hourly changes just by looking at the appearance of the chart» [1].
Usually, to determine the fractal dimension the Hurst's exponent is calculated [2]. However, for the reliable calculation of this exponent a huge amount of data
is necesary (~ 10^3) and that is too much comparing to the duration of the trends of trading.
The authors [1] interpose the fractal characteristics - the variation index (m) that is closely related to the common fractal dimension. In distinct from the
Hurst's exponent, the amount of information that is necessary for index determination is less by a factor of 2. It leads to use it as a local characteristics for
determination of the dynamics of the price series. If m < 0.5, it can be interpretated as a trend and m > 0.5 - as a flat.
The suggested indicator calculates the variation index on a previous interval which is 2^n long. The "n" parameter is specified by the user.
The common rules of the indicator application are the following:
If the value of the indicator is lower than 0.5 it means the trend state of the market.
The extremely low value is often precedes the end (correction) of the current trend.
If the value of the indicator is higher than 0.5 it means the flat state of the market.
The extremely high value is often precedes the beginning of the considerable trends.
If the value of the indicator is close to 0.5 it means an undefined state of the market.