Discussing the article: "Creating Custom Indicators in MQL5 (Part 11): Enhancing the Footprint Chart with Market Structure and Order Flow Layers"

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Check out the new article: Creating Custom Indicators in MQL5 (Part 11): Enhancing the Footprint Chart with Market Structure and Order Flow Layers.

This article extends the MQL5 footprint chart with market-structure and order-flow layers: volume-profile bars, point of control, value-area highlighting, stacked imbalance detection, absorption zones, and single-print/unfinished markers. We expand bar data structures, add functions for POC/value area, imbalance, and absorption, and build a fixed-order rendering pipeline. You will get ready-to-use inputs, metadata, and drawing utilities to integrate and customize these layers in your indicator.

The distribution of volume across price levels shows where participants were most active. The level with the highest combined volume is the point of control. It often acts as the bar's center of activity and a likely reaction level. The value area is the price range around the point of control that contains a configurable share of the bar's volume, typically seventy percent. It represents accepted value — prices outside it are more likely to be rejected. Single prints are levels touched only briefly with minimal volume, representing impulsive price movement through an area of little interest, while unfinished business marks extreme levels where only one side traded, signaling that price left without completing the auction and may return.

Stacked imbalances occur when ask volume at a level significantly outweighs bid volume at the level directly below it, or vice versa, across multiple consecutive rows. When this pattern stacks three or more levels deep, it signals a directional pressure zone where one side was repeatedly aggressive without meaningful opposition. Absorption is the opposite condition — a bar with high total volume but a net delta close to zero, meaning that one side absorbed the aggression of the other without allowing the price to move, often preceding a reversal. The cumulative volume delta tracks the running sum of net delta across all bars, revealing whether buying or selling pressure is building or fading over time, while the delta histogram provides a per-bar visual of that net imbalance scaled to the chart.

In live trading, use the point of control as a reference for mean-reversion entries — price returning to a prior bar's point of control after a deviation is a high-probability area for reaction. Watch for value area overlaps between consecutive bars to identify accepted price zones worth defending. Use stacked ask imbalances as directional fuel indicators, entering longs when price holds above a stacked ask zone. Flag absorption bars at key levels as potential reversal candidates, especially when the cumulative volume delta diverges from price direction. Use single prints as acceleration zones where price may move quickly on a revisit, and unfinished business levels as magnetic targets that the market tends to return to complete the auction.

To implement these features, we will extend the bar data structure with metadata covering point of control, value area bounds, imbalances, cumulative delta, and absorption, add dedicated computation functions for each layer, build a layered rendering pipeline with a fixed draw order, and add dynamic font scaling and a mini delta bar inside the information box. In brief, here is a visual representation of what we intend to build.

Author: Allan Munene Mutiiria