Three Bar Reversal MTF

The oldest reversal pattern there is, with the one thing chart books never give you: a number for how convincing it was. Three Bar Reversal MTF finds the classic three bar turn, draws the level the pattern leaves behind and holds it until the next one, and measures how far the third bar closed past that level as a fraction of the whole pattern's range. The measure carries no units, so patterns on different instruments can honestly be compared. It is free: no trial, no locked features, no upgrade page.

The middle bar of three sets an extreme: its low below the lows of both neighbours for the bullish case, or its high above both highs for the bearish one. The third bar then closes on the far side of that extreme. The two cases exclude each other by construction, since a close cannot be both above the high and below the low of the same bar.

The pattern leaves a level behind it, the broken extreme of the middle bar, and that level is drawn and held until the next pattern replaces it. The strength is how far past the level the third bar closed, measured in fractions of the full three bar range, which makes it unitless and comparable across symbols. The strength threshold ships at zero, so out of the box every pattern is published exactly as the definition describes it.

What is on the chart

Drawn in the price window: the level left by the last pattern as a line, coloured by the side it was made on and unbroken across a change, the middle bar's high and low as a band around it, two shades between them, and arrows on the third bar of the pattern.

The panel

A canvas panel on the price chart, draggable, collapsible, closeable. It shows the timeframe in force and the setting values actually being used. It says what the last closed bar was: a BUY signal, a SELL signal, or neither. And it says whether the numbers on screen came from the properties dialog or from the panel, and how many of them were changed by hand.

Below that sit the settings the panel can move, with their current values. The gear opens a three-tab sheet.

Values covers the timeframe and the minimum strength, how far the third bar must close past the level in three bar ranges, which is zero by default and therefore lets every pattern through. Styles covers the palette, the level line and its width, the arrow size, the pattern band and the two shades. Every Values row has steppers, a range and a sentence of help.

The Alerts tab covers the master switch, the per event switches, the channels, the cooldown in minutes and a test alert.

Three colour schemes: dark, light, and a colour-blind safe one that uses blue and orange rather than red and green. Everything about the panel, including every value changed on the sheet, is stored per chart and survives a timeframe change and a terminal restart. The interface is English.

Alerts

Off out of the box. Three events: a BUY signal, a SELL signal, and a touch of the level the last pattern left behind, which is the pull back event rather than a flip. Each has a switch of its own.

Channels: a popup window, a sound, a push to the mobile terminal and e-mail. There are per-event and per-channel switches, and a cooldown that defaults to two hours.

Alerts fire on the last closed bar. Two further alerts, off by default, speak on the forming bar within a chosen number of seconds of its close, and they are labelled early because a flip that exists mid-bar can un-happen. Telegram is not part of this product.

Signals on the forming bar

There is one switch that matters more than the others, and it is in the Values tab as well as in the inputs: whether buffers and arrows are allowed on the bar that is still forming.

With it on, which is the shipped default, you see a flip as soon as the market makes it. Sometimes that flip is undone before the bar closes and the arrow disappears. With it off, nothing is written on the forming bar at all: there is no repaint of any kind, and every signal arrives one bar late by construction.

Both behaviours are legitimate. The product does not pick for you and it does not hide which one it is doing: the panel and the setting name both say so.

Multi-timeframe

The Timeframe setting computes on a higher timeframe and draws the result here. Only closed senior bars are read: a chart bar shows the newest senior bar that had already closed by that chart bar's own close, so the flip lands on the bar that closes together with the senior bar, and nothing is drawn that could not have been known in real time.

The foreign series is built in the background. The first read of it can come back empty, the indicator retries, and the panel says whether it is waiting for a download or looking at a genuine shortage of history. It never fails initialisation over missing bars.

Reading it from an EA

Sixteen buffers, all readable through iCustom and CopyBuffer. Buffer 0, Buy, carries the arrow price on a BUY bar and EMPTY_VALUE otherwise, and is not drawn; buffer 1, Sell, is the same for a SELL. Buffers 2 to 5 belong to the two fills and are display plumbing, not for reading. Buffer 6 is the level the last pattern left behind while the trend is up and buffer 7 is the same line while it is down; on the turning bar both hold a value, which is what keeps the drawn line unbroken. Buffer 8 is the high of the pattern's middle bar and buffer 9 is its low. Buffers 10 and 11 are the drawn copies of buffers 0 and 1. Buffer 12, Signal, is +1 on a BUY bar, -1 on a SELL bar and 0 otherwise. Buffer 13 is Override, buffer 14 is the level the last pattern left behind as one unbroken series, and buffer 15 is the trend itself, 0 while up and 1 while down.

Buffer 16 is added by this port and sits after the whole shared map: the strength of the last pattern, in fractions of its three bar range. It carries no units, so it compares one symbol with another, which is what the board grades on.

Buffers 0 and 1 are the contract: never painted, filled on every pass whatever the Styles tab says, and present in the Data Window. Hiding the arrows on the display cannot starve a strategy of the signal, because hiding is done by changing how a plot is drawn and never by emptying a buffer.

An instance created by iCustom is read only and always uses the parameters you passed. The Override buffer lets a strategy detect that a chart instance is running on numbers changed by hand from the panel.

Provenance

This is a port of the three bar reversal. The pattern is public and has no author, and the implementation follows the classical definition.

The product is called Three Bar Reversal MTF because that is the name of the method, not because authorship of the method is claimed here. The original work belongs to its author.

Honest limits

A three bar pattern is three bars of evidence. It is the smallest structure that can be called a reversal at all, and it fails often, which is why the strength is published rather than hidden.

The strength describes the close of the third bar. It is a measurement of what happened, not a probability that the reversal holds.

With the threshold at its shipped value of zero, every pattern is reported, including the weak ones. Raising it makes the board quieter and hides patterns that the definition would count.

No profit figure, win rate or backtest result is claimed here.