SMC Swing Structure and Fair Value Gaps

SMC Swing Structure and Fair Value Gaps

Most market structure indicators draw every break and every gap they can find, and the chart ends up covered in lines from months ago. This one shows one swing at a time. You pick a swing with the arrows on the chart panel, and only that swing is drawn: its leg, the structure level it broke, and the fair value gaps created inside it.

Key Features

• One swing at a time. The chart stays clean because nothing outside the selected swing is drawn.
• Step through swings with the panel arrows - back one swing, forward one swing, or jump straight to the latest swing with the double arrow.
• The selected swing leg is highlighted in its own colour, up or down.
• The structure level that the swing broke is drawn and labelled as a Break of Structure or a Change of Character, with a separate colour, style and width for each.
• The label sits off the line so it never covers the candles.
• Fair value gaps of that swing only, and only the ones facing the same way as the swing, so a down swing shows bearish gaps and an up swing shows bullish gaps.
• A Filled button on the panel shows or hides the gaps that price has already traded through. Filled zones are drawn in their own colour and stop at the exact bar that filled them, so you can see where price came back.
• Unfilled zones are limited to the ones sitting on the far side of price, and they extend to the current bar without running off into the future.
• When you step back to an older swing, the zones are judged against the price where that swing ended rather than today's price, so an old setup is shown the way it looked at the time. This makes stepping back through history useful for review.
• Two fill criteria: Full, price passes the entire zone, or CE, price reaches the 50% level.
• Dashed 50% midline in every zone, with its own colour.
• The panel can be dragged anywhere, minimized to a small bar, and it remembers its position, the selected swing and the Filled state when you switch timeframe.
• Every colour is adjustable. Text colours can be left on the default so they follow the colour of their own line.
• Works on any symbol and any timeframe.

How It Works

Swings come from a ZigZag with adjustable depth, deviation and back step. One swing is one leg of that ZigZag, from one pivot to the next, and swing number one is the leg still forming. For the selected swing the indicator looks at the level set by the pivot before it: if price closed through that level in the same direction as the previous move it is marked as a Break of Structure, and if it closed through it against the previous move it is marked as a Change of Character. Inside the same swing it then scans for the three candle pattern where the middle candle moves far enough to leave a gap between the first and the third candle, draws each gap as a zone with its 50% midline, and checks whether price later came back into it.

Input Parameters

ZigZag and swings

• Depth, Deviation, Back Step - the ZigZag settings that decide what counts as a swing.
• Bars to scan for pivots and Max pivots kept - how far back swings are collected.
• Draw ZigZag line and Highlight selected swing leg.

Colours: ZigZag and swing leg

• ZigZag line colour, swing leg colour up and down, swing leg width.

Break of Structure

• Line colour up and down, text colour, line style, line width.

Change of Character

• Line colour up and down, text colour, line style, line width.

Structure text

• Font size and offset from the line, in points.

Fair value gaps

• Filled criteria - Full, the entire zone, or CE, the 50% level.
• Show filled zones - the state the Filled button starts in.
• Only zones on the far side of price.
• Minimum zone size in points - zones smaller than this are ignored.
• Show midline and midline colour.
• Bullish, bearish and filled zone colours.
• Show label, label font size and label colour.

Panel

• Show control panel and panel scale for high resolution screens.

Notes

• This is a visual analysis tool. It does not send trading signals and does not open orders.
• Structure and gaps are read from closed bars of the chart timeframe.