Var Trail Tracker

A trailing stop that speeds up and slows down with the market instead of ignoring it. Var Trail Tracker MTF drives its support average with VIDYA, whose weight follows a momentum measure, then trails a percentage stop around it and compares the two with the original's own two bar delay. Signals are the support average crossing that delayed line, exactly as the method defines them. It is free: no trial, no locked features, no upgrade page.

The support average is a VAR, that is a variable index dynamic average whose smoothing weight is driven by a nine bar momentum measure. When momentum is strong the average follows price closely; when it is weak the average slows down and stops reacting to noise.

Around that average a percentage trailing stop is placed, and the resulting line is drawn with a delay of two bars, exactly as in the original. The signals are the support average crossing that delayed line, which is what makes them arrive after the market has confirmed the move rather than during it.

What is on the chart

Drawn in the price window: the trail line coloured by its side and unbroken across the cross, the VAR support average as a thin line, two shades between them, and BUY and SELL arrows on the crossing bar. The support average can be hidden on its own.

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, the support period that sets the VAR length, two by default, and the trail percentage that sets the stop distance as a per cent of the average, 1.4 by default. Styles covers the palette, the trail line and its width, the arrow size, the support average 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 trail line, 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 trail line 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 VAR support average the trail is built from and buffer 9 is a service series kept for the shared buffer map. 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 trail line as one unbroken series, and buffer 15 is the trend itself, 0 while up and 1 while down.

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 method publicly known as the Optimized Trend Tracker, devised by Anil Ozekshi, taken from KivancOzbilgic's openly published TradingView script, which makes a port by formula admissible. The product name is descriptive on purpose: the abbreviation is bound to the author of the method and a name does not transfer with a formula, so this is called Var Trail Tracker and the origin is credited here.

The product is called Var Trail Tracker 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

The two bar delay is part of the method, not an implementation choice. It is what the signals are measured against, and it also means the product speaks two bars after the crossing that caused it.

An adaptive average is still an average. In a market with no momentum at all it becomes very slow, and a turn there will be reported long after it happened.

The trail percentage is a per cent of the average, not of your risk. A wider setting produces fewer and later signals and a narrower one produces more and earlier ones, and neither is the correct setting.

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