Triple Screen Impulse System MT4

Triple Screen Impulse System is a chart-window indicator that implements the three-screen structure described by Alexander Elder, using the Impulse System on two periods and the Force Index on a third. Its output is an arrow, printed only when all three screens permit the same direction. Each screen can also be drawn on the chart, so the state behind an arrow — or behind the absence of one — is visible rather than left to be inferred. No trade levels are drawn, because the indicator answers one narrow question: at this moment, do all three screens permit the same direction.

The first screen is the tide. The Impulse System runs on a period higher than the chart period and reports one of three states. Green means the exponential moving average and the MACD histogram are both rising, red means both are falling, blue means they disagree. In Elder's original description this screen works as a censorship layer: it does not tell you to trade, it tells you which direction you may not trade. A green tide removes short trades from consideration, a red tide removes long trades.

The second screen is the wave. The Force Index runs on an intermediate period and locates a pullback against the tide. Inside a green tide, the Force Index turning negative marks the counter-trend move that precedes a with-trend entry; inside a red tide the mirror condition applies. This screen arms the setup and does not produce an arrow by itself.

The third screen is the chart period. Once a setup is armed, the Impulse System on the chart period changing into the direction of the tide prints the arrow. The arrow is therefore a statement that the tide, the wave and the current period have lined up, evaluated on closed bars.

Each screen has its own display layer and its own switch. The tide is drawn as coloured outlines over the price, one per higher-period bar. The wave is drawn as a Force Index band along the bottom of the chart window, one bar per candle, with a zero line. The current period is drawn as recoloured candles. A small panel carries one button per layer, can be dragged anywhere on the chart, and can be switched off completely, leaving only the arrows. The layers are drawing only: they do not change the arrows or the periods those arrows are evaluated on. Their purpose is diagnostic — when an arrow does not appear where one was expected, the screen that withheld permission can be identified immediately.

An arrow is not an instruction to open a position, and this indicator does not calculate entry prices, stop levels or targets. Following Elder's own framing, the arrow narrows the field: if a trade is taken around this point, the three screens agree it should be a long, or a short, and the opposite direction is currently excluded. Whether to act at all, where to place the order, where the stop belongs and how large the position should be remain entirely the trader's decisions. Arrows appear in two forms — a coloured arrow where the tide colour had already persisted for the number of closed higher-period bars set in the trend confirmation setting, and a grey arrow where the signal fired before that, meaning the higher-period trend was still young. Setting that value to zero disables the distinction.

Every stage is evaluated on closed bars. Bar zero is still forming and its Impulse colour can change repeatedly before it completes, so it is never used. Cross-period lookups resolve to the newest bar of that period that had already closed at the moment the signal was taken, so the arrows shown on history correspond to what the indicator would have produced in real time rather than being reconstructed with information that arrived afterwards.

The Force Index follows Elder's own definition: the change in closing price multiplied by the bar's volume, smoothed afterwards with an exponential moving average. This is not the same as the Force Index built into the terminal, which smooths the price first and takes the difference afterwards. The difference matters for this method in particular, because the second screen depends on the value crossing zero during a pullback, and the built-in version largely does not.

Period selection follows Elder's structure. Choose the entry period first, since that is the chart you are working on; set the wave period to roughly four or five times the entry period, and the tide period to roughly four or five times the wave period. On a five minute chart that gives a twenty or twenty five minute wave and a one or two hour tide. Each screen's period is set independently of the chart period, and the list is not limited to the periods your terminal provides — any period the platform does not carry is built from the one minute series, so the classic Elder ratios are available without changing the chart you work on. If the three periods do not increase, the indicator rebuilds the ladder upward from the entry period and writes what it did to the log, rather than quietly running three screens that have collapsed into one.

The two components behind these screens are also published separately as free indicators, under the names Impulse System MTF and Force Index MTF. Traders who want the Force Index in a dedicated sub-window, or who prefer to study each screen on its own first, can search for those names and download them. Their multi-timeframe selection covers only the standard period list offered by the platform, so the intermediate periods this indicator builds are not available in them; their readings, however, now agree with this indicator bar for bar, which makes them a convenient way to verify what the screens here report.

The remaining settings cover the Impulse and Force Index lengths, how many chart bars a setup stays armed before it expires, whether the tide must still agree at the moment of entry, a long only or short only filter, how many bars of history to use, and the appearance of the arrows and of each layer. An option limits the indicator to one arrow per contiguous tide colour run. Alerts can be delivered as a terminal popup, a sound, an email or a push notification. The arrow buffers are exposed so that an Expert Advisor can read the signals directly.

Costs deserve attention with this method. Because the arrow marks a direction rather than a price, the distance to a sensible stop is set by the market structure around the signal, and on very short periods the spread can account for a large share of that distance. Working on higher periods first is a reasonable way to begin.

Disclaimer: this is an analysis tool. It does not open, modify or close positions, and it makes no forecast of future prices. Test it on a demo account, form your own view of whether the method suits your instrument and period, and manage your own risk. This is an independent implementation of a publicly described method and is not affiliated with, authorised by or endorsed by the a