Displacement

Displacement is a free MT5 indicator. It marks unusually large candles with strong bodies right on your price chart, for traders who trade impulsive moves. Each one gets an arrow and a shaded box over its range; one on-chart panel sums up the last signal. In the Lab's repaint test on EURUSD M15, 0 of 142 signals changed after their bar closed, and no arrow appeared late (maximum delay: 0 bars).

It helps when you want a fixed rule to define "big candle", so you don't judge it by eye.

What it draws on your chart

A displacement is a candle much larger than recent bars, with most of its range in the body. It shows that one side pushed price hard in a single bar. The indicator turns that idea into fixed numbers. A closed bar counts only when it passes all three of these tests:

• Its true range is at least InpATRMult × the ATR of the previous bar.
• Its true range is at least InpAvgRangeMult × the average true range of the previous InpAvgRangeLookback bars.
• Its body is at least InpMinBodyRatio of its high-low range.

When a bar qualifies, you get a Bullish Displacement or Bearish Displacement arrow on that bar. You also get a Displacement Box over its high-low, which fades as it ages. Everything draws on the main chart, not in a subwindow. Version 1.00 is a 93.8 KB file and was tested on MT5 build 6230.

How the Lab tested it

The Lab ran the indicator on EURUSD M15 from 2026-07-06 to 2026-10-02 (about 13 weeks), using Raw Trading Ltd real ticks, and logged 142 signals. Every signal was logged when it fired and checked again later for changes. To measure signal quality, the Lab asked one question for each arrow: did price move 1 ATR in the arrow's direction before it moved 1 ATR against it?

The chart below shows the result for all signals and for each arrow type.

What these numbers mean for you:

• 51.4% overall is close to a coin flip. A displacement bar on its own does not tell you where price goes next. Treat the arrow as a reason to look closer, not as an entry.
• Bullish arrows did better than bearish ones. Bullish arrows hit 55.1%. Bearish arrows hit 45.3%, below 50% on only 53 signals. That is too few to call it an edge against you, but enough to filter them harder.
• Expect about 11.2 signals per week on EURUSD M15: about 7 bullish and 4.2 bearish. That is enough to work with, but too many to take every one blindly.

Who it is for

It fits traders who already have a plan built around impulsive candles, such as breaks of structure or zones left behind by strong moves. It gives you a clear, repeatable trigger for that plan. It does not replace the plan.

Install

Copy the downloaded .ex5 file into your MQL5/Indicators folder, refresh the Navigator and drag Displacement onto a chart.

How to read the arrow, the box and the panel

The arrow sits on the displacement bar itself and appears only after that bar closes. While a bar is still forming, nothing is drawn on it. The box covers that bar's high and low. It fades over InpFadeBars bars (default 20) and is hidden after that. It is not deleted.

The example below shows what a typical bullish signal looks like.

The Signal panel shows:

• the direction of the last displacement and how many bars ago it fired
• its range as a multiple of ATR, and its body as a percent of the bar
• the last closed bar's range compared with ATR
• the bull and bear counts over the last 100 bars
• the current ATR
• the higher-timeframe trend and swing levels, when those filters are on

The "last bar range vs ATR" line is useful for checking near-misses. When a big bar gets no arrow, this line tells you how close it came to the ATR test. The average-range and body tests can still reject it.

The inputs to change first

• InpATRMult and InpAvgRangeMult (both default 2): these set how big a bar must be. Higher values give fewer, more extreme bars. Lower values give more arrows and more noise.
• InpMinBodyRatio (default 0.6): raise it to drop bars with long wicks, which are often rejections rather than one-sided pushes.
• InpRequireSwingBreak (default off): when on, a signal counts only if the bar's close breaks the latest confirmed swing high or low. InpSwingLookback (default 10) sets how many bars confirm a swing. A swing is confirmed that many bars late, so a very recent high is not used yet.
• InpMTFAlignEnable with InpMTFTimeframe (default off, H1): when on, signals count only in the direction of the EMA50 slope on the last closed bar of the higher timeframe.
• InpHistoryBars (default 500): the number of closed bars scanned for past signals when you attach the indicator.

Where alerts appear

All alerts fire when a new displacement bar closes.

• InpAlertPopup (on by default) opens the MT5 alert window.
• InpAlertPush (off by default) sends a notification to the MT5 mobile app linked to your terminal.
• InpAlertSound (off by default) plays InpSoundFile.

A decision rule for each arrow (our suggestion, not tested by the Lab)

• Bullish arrow: act on it only if the close broke a swing high (turn on InpRequireSwingBreak or check by eye) and the higher-timeframe EMA50 slopes up. If either check fails, note the box and wait.
• Bearish arrow: require both filters, or skip it. Bearish arrows were the weaker side in the Lab sample.
• After either arrow: if price closes back beyond the far side of the box, treat the displacement as failed.

A common misread

The arrow marks a bar whose range is already at least 2× ATR at default settings, so entering at its close often means buying the top of a spike. Check how far price already is from the box. If the move is too stretched for your stop, the signal is real, but the trade is not for you.