MTF Currency Strength Panel MT4

This panel shows where the eight major currencies stand right now, and how each of the 28 major pairs has been moving across nine timeframes at once. Both readings sit on one chart, updated on a timer.

Ranking pairs on their own is misleading. When a single currency moves, every pair containing it moves with it, so the top of a pair ranking is often the same currency repeated seven times. This panel separates the driver from the duplicates by decomposing the whole matrix into individual currency strengths.

How the decomposition works

Each of the eight currencies appears in seven of the twenty-eight pairs. Its strength is the average of those seven readings, with the sign inverted wherever it is the quote currency — a falling AUDJPY means a strengthening yen, not a weakening one.

Every pair contributes to exactly two currencies — positively to its base and negatively to its quote — so across the full set of twenty-eight those contributions cancel and the eight strengths sum to zero. The panel uses that as an internal check: if the values did not balance, the decomposition would be wrong. It also means the readings are relative to each other rather than absolute. A currency is not strong on its own, only strong against the rest of the set.

The practical effect is that eight clean numbers replace twenty-eight overlapping ones. Instead of reading seven yen crosses at the bottom of a list and inferring the common cause, you see the cause directly.

What the pair rows show

Each pair row carries nine coloured blocks, one per timeframe from M1 to MN1, showing the direction and size of the most recently completed move on that timeframe. By default green is a strong advance, yellow a weak one, grey is flat, orange a weak decline and red a strong one. All five colours are inputs and can be changed.

Reading the row left to right tells you whether a move is confined to the shorter timeframes or has carried through to the longer ones. A row that is red across M1 to M15 but green on H4 and above is a recent move that has not yet turned the larger picture.

The score at the end of each row is the weighted average of those nine readings. Rows are sorted by it, strongest at the top.

The divergence marker

If the decomposition explains the matrix perfectly, a pair's score should equal the strength of its base currency minus the strength of its quote. Where a pair sits well away from that, its movement is not fully accounted for by either currency, and the panel marks it.

The threshold is set in standard deviations across the whole matrix rather than as a fixed number, so it adapts to quiet and busy conditions alike.

It is worth tuning to taste. A high threshold isolates only the most extreme cases; lowering it distributes the marks across the matrix and shows the smaller discrepancies that a strict setting hides. One of the screenshots was taken at a low threshold to make this visible — the marks appear at the top of the panel, in the middle and at the bottom, rather than only on the pairs that had moved furthest.

One thing to expect at higher thresholds: when a single currency is moving hard, its pairs will tend to flag together. The averaging that produces eight clean strengths cannot fully absorb an outsized move, so the whole group reads as partly unexplained. The marker is most informative in ordinary conditions and least so during a violent single-currency move — which is the opposite of what you might assume, and worth knowing before you rely on it.

Inputs

• Panel content — currencies and pairs, currencies only, or pairs only
• Panel corner — any of the four, with horizontal and vertical offsets in pixels
• Font size, row spacing, block width and height — the panel scales to suit your chart
• Pair rows to show — 1 to 28, for smaller windows
• Compress strength bars — a square-root scale so one dominant currency does not flatten every other bar to a stub
• Show last-update time — a visible stamp, so a frozen panel is obvious rather than assumed live
• Flag pairs diverging from their currencies — on or off, with an adjustable threshold in standard deviations
• Refresh interval — in seconds
• Freeze when market is closed — stops redrawing an unchanging panel
• Symbol suffix — detected automatically; can be set manually for unusual broker naming
• Colours — all five block states, the divergence marker, and the text

Fitting your chart

Text colour is taken from the chart background by default, so the panel stays readable on a light or a dark scheme without being reconfigured. Changing scheme repaints it immediately rather than waiting for the next refresh. Scrolling and zooming do not trigger a redraw.

The panel is anchored to the corner you choose and offset in pixels, so it stays where you put it when the window is resized.

What the screenshots show

• Dual-Chart Independence — EURUSD Daily on the left, XAUUSD H1 on the right. The panel processes the entire 28-pair matrix independently of the chart it sits on: both panels read the same eight currency strengths and the same 28 pair scores, on different symbols and different timeframes.
• The Parameter Matrix — the native MT4 Inputs dialog showing the full configuration matrix, with the strongest bullish pair visible in the background. The inputs allow complete tuning to fit any screen resolution or chart theme.
• Compact Mode — Currencies-only mode (InpMode = 1) running on a US Dollar Index (DXYm) H1 chart. The panel is collapsed to its most spatially efficient form, measuring USD as the weakest currency without requiring the full 28-pair grid.
• Focused Mode — Pairs-only mode (InpMode = 2) on a USDJPYm Daily chart. The top currency strength block is hidden, focusing entirely on the 28-pair composite ranking, with USDJPY at the bottom of the ranking.
• Divergence Threshold Tuning — the full panel on an NZDJPYm Daily chart with the Divergence Threshold lowered. The marker fires when a pair's move differs from its two currencies' strengths by more than the threshold, set here below the default so more of the matrix is flagged.

Calculation behaviour

Each timeframe reading blends the currently forming bar with the last completed one, so the panel responds to live movement while remaining anchored to closed data. Where a timeframe's history is unavailable for a pair, that timeframe is excluded and the score is normalised across the timeframes that were actually read — a pair is never pushed down the ranking because data was missing rather than because it moved.

The panel refreshes on its own timer rather than on chart ticks. This matters on a 28-symbol display: driven by the chart symbol, an illiquid cross during a quiet session would stall the whole panel while the rest of the market moved.

Notes

• Draws on the price chart as objects. No indicator buffers, no plots, no separate window.
• All 28 major pairs must be available from your broker. The panel reports any that are missing by name in the Experts log.
• The currency section is hidden if fewer than 28 pairs are available, since a partial decomposition would be misleading.
• The panel reads fixed timeframes from M1 to MN1. It does not follow the timeframe of the chart it is attached to.
• No external dependencies. Every value is calculated inside the indicator. It does not call any other indicator, so there are no handles to fail, nothing to install alongside it, and no dependency on the state of your standard indicator folder.

This panel is a tool for technical analysis and market-condition filtering. It is not a trading system, it does not generate trading signals, it does not provide investment advice, and it does not open or manage trades automatically. It describes where the market has moved; it does not predict where it will go. No performance claims are made for it.

Free to download and use. If you find it useful, a rating helps other traders find it.

Developed and maintained by Narayanan Mohanan, MT4/MQL4 Developer.