Williams Vix Fix MTF

A fear index for instruments that do not have one. Williams Vix Fix MTF measures how far below the recent highest close a bar's low fell, which is the thing a VIX gives an index, and opens a panic zone when that reading clears its own Bollinger band or comes close to its own recent high. Larry Williams built it to find capitulation, and this port adds the mirrored side so a board can show both. It is free: no trial, no locked features, no upgrade page.

The gauge is one subtraction: how far below the highest close of the recent window this bar's low went, as a per cent of that high. A panic zone opens when the reading clears its own Bollinger band or comes within a set fraction of its own recent high.

The original is one sided and hunts capitulation only. A board needs both sides, so a literal mirror of the same formula runs beside it for the euphoria half, and it is labelled as a mirror wherever it appears. The signal is the zone closing rather than opening, which is the entry the author's own strategy takes.

What is on the chart

In its own sub window: the fear gauge above zero and its mirrored euphoria gauge drawn below it, so the sign alone says which side of the market a reading belongs to, and behind them the zone bars, filled upward while panic is open and downward while euphoria is. Divergence lines are drawn on the gauge and, if you want them, between the matching pivots on the price chart as well.

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 vix lookback of twenty two bars, the Bollinger length of twenty and its multiplier, the range lookback of fifty bars and its threshold of 0.85 that give the second way a zone can open, and the three divergence rows. Styles covers the palette, the two gauges and their width, and the zone bars. 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. Six events: a BUY signal, a SELL signal, a bullish divergence, a bearish divergence, a panic zone opening, and a euphoria zone opening. 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.

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

Nine buffers, all readable through iCustom and CopyBuffer. Buffer 0 is the fear gauge, drawn above zero and buffer 1 is the mirrored euphoria gauge, drawn below it so the sign alone says which side a reading belongs to. Buffer 2 is the zone bars, filled upward while a panic zone is open and downward while a euphoria zone is, and buffer 3 is the colour index that paints it. Buffer 4, Signal, is +1 on a BUY bar, -1 on a SELL bar and 0 otherwise. Buffer 5 is the grade of that signal. Buffer 6 carries the divergence marks, +1 bullish and -1 bearish. Buffer 7 is the zero line and buffer 8 is Override.

This product has no separate Buy and Sell price buffers, because there is no price to put an arrow at in a sub window. The signal is buffer 4 and it is the contract: filled on every pass whatever the Styles tab says, and present in the Data Window. Hiding a plot is done by taking its colour away and never by emptying a buffer, so every index above stays readable with the display switches off.

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 Williams Vix Fix. The method is Larry Williams' and is published, and the widely mirrored Pine implementation is ChrisMoody's and is openly published, which makes a port by formula admissible. Two deviations are declared. The first is the mirror: the original is one sided, and a board needs both sides, so the same formula is reflected for the euphoria half. The second is the warm up, where the windows are progressive and Pine returns nothing at all.

The product is called Williams Vix Fix 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 oscillator is live on the forming bar. A cross that exists mid-bar can be absent at the close, and the panel line and the grade go with it. Closed bars do not change.

The gauge measures fear, not direction. A panic reading is a statement about the distance from a recent high, and a market can stay frightened for a long time while going lower.

The signal is the zone closing, not its opening. That is the entry the original author's own strategy takes, and it means the product speaks after the extreme rather than at it.

The euphoria half is a mirror the original does not have. It is the same arithmetic reflected, and it is labelled as such wherever it appears rather than being presented as part of the method.

The settings move every signal the product will ever show. Two configurations produce two different sets of signals, and neither of them is the true one.

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