SMC Daily Sweep Entry — Complete Settings Guide (MT5 SMC Indicator)
Every input explained in plain English, with what each one changes on your chart and when you would actually touch it.
The SMC Daily Sweep Entry is an ICT / SMC indicator for MetaTrader 5. It watches the previous day high and low, waits for a liquidity sweep, and only calls a trade once price breaks structure back inside the range. This guide covers all 51 settings, grouped exactly as they appear in the indicator properties window.
If you only read one section, read ⏰ Liquidity Cascade. It is the setting that changes the strategy most, and the one most people get wrong on the first run.
🎯 Quick start — the five that matter
New to the indicator? Leave everything at default and check these five first.
| Setting | Default | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| ⏰ Escalate levels through the sessions | true | Turns the whole day into one liquidity chain instead of a single PDH/PDL trade |
| 🕐 Session hours | 02/10, 09/18, 15/23 | Server time, not your time. Wrong here and everything downstream is wrong |
| 🔢 Max signals per trading day | 3 | Set to 1 and the cascade can never fire twice |
| 📈 Require HTF trend agreement | true | Roughly halves the setups. The single biggest filter |
| 📍 Where to place the entry | Break level | Decides whether you enter on the break or wait for a pullback |
📊 Market Structure
Controls how the indicator decides a swing high or low has been broken, and how much of that history stays on screen.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Show internal structure (BOS / CHoCH) | true | Draws the short-term break of structure and change of character lines. This is the structure the entry logic actually uses |
| Internal: pivot lookback (bars each side) | 4 | How many bars either side a candle needs to count as a pivot. Lower = more breaks, more noise. Higher = fewer, cleaner breaks |
| Show unbroken levels | true | Marks the levels price still has to break for a setup to trigger. Useful for seeing what the indicator is waiting on |
| Breaks kept on chart (per type) | 10 | How many recent BOS/CHoCH lines stay visible. Purely visual |
💡 Tip: on M5 and below, try a lookback of 5 or 6 if you are getting structure breaks on every small wiggle.
💧 Sweep & Signal
This is the imbalance engine — fair value gaps, inversion gaps, balanced price ranges — plus the rules that turn a structure break into an actual signal.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Only take breaks that contain an imbalance | false | Turn on to reject any structure break with no FVG/IFVG/BPR inside it. A strong filter — expect far fewer setups |
| Count FVG | true | Detect fair value gaps |
| Count IFVG | true | Detect inversion fair value gaps (a gap that has been traded through and flipped) |
| Count BPR | true | Detect balanced price ranges (where a bullish and bearish gap overlap) |
| FVG: when it counts as filled | Any wick | See the mitigation table below |
| IFVG: when it counts as filled | Any wick | Same, set separately |
| BPR: when it counts as filled | Any wick | Same, set separately |
| Minimum gap size (points) | 0.0 | Ignore gaps thinner than this. Raise it on gold or indices where tiny gaps are everywhere |
| The break must sit back inside the PD range | true | Enforces the reversal model — price must come back inside the range after sweeping it |
| Signal on BOS as well as CHoCH | true | Turn off to only accept a change of character, which is the stricter reversal signal |
| Max signals per trading day | 3 | Hard cap. Set to 1 and the liquidity cascade can never produce a second setup |
🧊 How "when it counts as filled" works
A zone stops being tradeable once price has filled it. You get three rules, set separately per type:
| Option | Meaning | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Any wick into the zone | A single wick touch retires it | Fewest zones, cleanest chart |
| A candle closing inside the zone | Needs a close within the zone | Middle ground |
| A candle closing beyond the far edge | The whole gap must be closed past | Most zones survive, busiest chart |
💡 Why three separate settings? They behave differently. An FVG is a raw gap and gets probed constantly. An IFVG has already been traded through once by definition. A BPR is the overlap of two gaps, so it is narrower than either and fills soonest. One rule across all three suits none of them well.
🧹 Chart too busy? Turn off Count IFVG and Count BPR first. All three types often find overlapping versions of the same imbalance, which is why you sometimes see FVG, IFVG and BPR stacked at one price.
⏰ Liquidity Cascade
The most important group. This is what makes the indicator different from a plain previous-day-high/low tool.
Instead of hunting PDH/PDL all day, the reference levels escalate:
- 🌏 PDH swept during Asia → London now hunts the Asian session high
- 🇬🇧 Asian high swept during London → New York now hunts the London session high
- ↔️ It works per side — a swept high does not move the low, which stays on PDL
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Escalate levels through the sessions | true | Master switch. Off = trade PDH/PDL only, all day |
| Asia: start hour (server time) | 2 | Asian session opens |
| Asia: end hour (exclusive) | 10 | Asian session closes — this is when the handover happens |
| London: start hour (server time) | 9 | London session opens |
| London: end hour (exclusive) | 18 | London closes and hands over to New York |
| New York: start hour (server time) | 15 | New York session opens |
| New York: end hour (exclusive) | 23 | New York session closes |
| Draw session start / end lines on the chart | true | Vertical dotted lines with session names |
🕐 Server time, not your time
The hours are in your broker's server time, because that is what every candle timestamp in MT5 uses. Most brokers run GMT+2 in winter and GMT+3 in summer, but not all.
✅ How to check in 30 seconds: turn on Log decisions to the Experts tab, reload the indicator, and read the line that prints both your server time and GMT. Adjust the hours until the session lines land where the sessions really start on your chart.
⚠️ Overlapping sessions
The default hours overlap, and the indicator resolves that by testing Asia, then London, then New York — first match wins:
| Hour | Belongs to |
|---|---|
| 09:00 | Asia (in both Asia and London) |
| 15:00–17:59 | London (in both London and New York) |
So for building ranges and deciding which session a sweep belongs to, the real blocks are Asia 02–10, London 10–18, New York 18–23. Each session still closes and hands over at its own configured end hour.
Want each hour to belong to the session it is named after? Set Asia end to 9 and London end to 15 .
📦 Trade Levels (TP / SL boxes)
Where entry, stop and target are placed, and how they look.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Draw TP / SL boxes | true | The green target box and brown stop box |
| Stop buffer past the leg extreme | 0.0 | Extra room beyond the sweep low/high. 0 puts the stop exactly on it |
| Target, in multiples of risk | 2.0 | A 1:2 risk-to-reward target. Also drives the 1:1 line |
| Where to place the entry | Break level | See the entry mode table below |
| Fib entry depth (0 = break, 1 = stop) | 0.618 | Only used in fib mode |
| Draw the 1:1 halfway line | true | The break-even / partial-take level |
| How many bars the TP/SL boxes extend right | 40 | Purely visual |
| Draw the zone that qualified the entry | true | Shows the FVG/IFVG/BPR behind the entry |
📍 Entry modes explained
| Mode | Where the entry goes | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| The break level itself | On the structure break | Simplest. Fills most often |
| Nearest FVG/IFVG/BPR zone | Near edge of the closest zone by price | Better entry price, may not fill |
| Earliest formed zone in the leg | Near edge of the oldest zone | Deepest pullback, best R, fills least |
| Fib pullback | Between break level and stop | Fixed-depth retracement entries |
💡 The stop does not move between modes. It stays pinned to the sweep extreme — so a deeper entry gives you a tighter stop and a better risk-to-reward, not a different risk point.
⚠️ The three zone modes need at least one of Count FVG / IFVG / BPR turned on. With all three off they quietly fall back to the break level.
📈 Trend Filter
Keeps you trading in one direction with higher-timeframe structure.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Require HTF trend agreement | true | Only signal when higher-timeframe structure agrees with the trade direction |
| Timeframe the structure is measured on | D1 | Which timeframe the trend is read from |
| External: pivot lookback (bars each side) | 4 | Swing size for the higher-timeframe structure |
| Tint background with HTF trend | true | Green background = bullish HTF, red = bearish |
| Draw external structure (display only) | false | Draws the bigger swing BOS/CHoCH on your chart. Display only — does not affect signals |
💡 This is the single biggest filter in the indicator. Turning it off will roughly double your setups and lower their quality. If you are seeing very few signals, this is the first place to look.
🎨 Chart Drawings
How much history is processed, and which markers are drawn.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Backfill window (days) | 30 | How far back to process on load |
| Minimum bars to backfill | 300 | A floor in bars. Matters on high timeframes — 30 days is only about 22 bars on the daily chart, far too few for structure to form |
| Fill the previous-day range box | true | Shaded box over the previous day's range |
| Show the "SWEEP" text label | true | Names the level taken: PDL SWEEP , ASIA L SWEEP , LDN H SWEEP |
| Sweep marker size | 1 | Arrow size, 1 is smallest |
| Show the last trade setup panel | false | On-chart summary panel of the most recent setup |
💡 Only the current state is ever drawn. The range box, level lines, sweep marker and setup all use one object that gets moved, so your chart never fills up with weeks of old boxes.
🖌️ Chart Appearance
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Recolour the chart on load | true | Applies a dark theme with matching candle colours. Turn off to keep your own template |
| Hide the chart grid | true | Cleaner background |
🔍 Diagnostics
Turn these on when something is not behaving and you want to know why.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Log decisions to the Experts tab | false | Explains every structure break — taken or skipped, and the reason |
| Data events only (hide signal detail) | false | Quieter version: only history loading, day rollovers and session handovers |
✅ What the log tells you: which gaps were found in the leg and whether each was open or already filled, which zone the entry mode picked, which session a sweep belonged to, and exactly why a break was rejected. If a setup did not appear where you expected one, this answers it in seconds.
🔔 Alerts
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Alert on entry signals | true | Fires when a complete setup forms |
| Also push to the MT5 mobile app | true | Sends to your phone. Needs your MetaQuotes ID set in Tools → Options → Notifications |
| Alert on liquidity sweeps | true | Fires on the sweep, before the structure break |
| Alert on bullish CHoCH / BOS | false | Every bullish structure break. Noisy on low timeframes |
| Alert on bearish CHoCH / BOS | false | Every bearish structure break |
💡 Sweep alerts are the useful early warning — they tell you a setup is forming, giving you time to be at the chart before the structure break confirms it.
⚙️ Three setups to start from
🟢 Conservative — fewest, highest-quality setups
- Require HTF trend agreement: true
- Only take breaks that contain an imbalance: true
- Signal on BOS as well as CHoCH: false (CHoCH only)
- Max signals per trading day: 1
- Escalate levels through the sessions: false
🔵 Balanced — the shipped defaults
- Everything at default
- Cascade on, HTF filter on, up to 3 setups a day
🟠 Active — more setups, more management
- Only take breaks that contain an imbalance: false
- Require HTF trend agreement: false
- Max signals per trading day: 5
- Internal pivot lookback: 3
❓ Common questions
Why am I seeing no signals at all? Usually the HTF trend filter, or Max signals per trading day already used up. Turn on the debug log and read the skip reasons — it names the gate that rejected each break.
Why does the sweep marker say ASIA L when the line says LDN L? By design. The marker records what was taken at the moment it was taken. If the low side has since cascaded to the London low, the line moves on but the marker keeps telling you the truth about that sweep.
Why no signals on the daily chart? Raise Minimum bars to backfill. A 30-day window is about 22 bars on D1, which is not enough for pivots to form and be broken.
Do the session lines change my signals? Only through the cascade. They are drawn from the same hours the handover uses, so the lines always show where the reference can actually change hands.
Does it repaint? Sweeps and structure breaks are evaluated on closed candles only. A confirmed setup does not move.
🚀 Setup checklist
- ✅ Attach to your chart and let the loading bar finish
- ✅ Turn on the debug log once and confirm your server time offset
- ✅ Adjust the six session hours to match your broker
- ✅ Decide on the cascade — on for session-to-session liquidity, off for plain PDH/PDL
- ✅ Set Max signals per trading day to match how you actually trade
- ✅ Pick an entry mode and leave it alone for a few weeks before judging it
- ✅ Turn the debug log back off
The SMC Daily Sweep Entry is a charting and analysis tool. It does not place trades and does not manage risk on your behalf. Nothing here is financial advice — test any configuration on a demo account before trading it live.
