Zero Lag Trend Scanner MT4

A fast trend line that still refuses to flip on noise, across your whole watchlist. Zero-Lag Trend Scanner runs the zero lag average and its volatility band over up to twenty eight symbols and four timeframes, sorts by what broke most recently, and keeps the chart under the board so the break can be seen before the entry.

Zero-Lag Trend Scanner is two products in one file. The first is Zero-Lag Trend itself, drawn on the chart in front of you: the zero lag average, its volatility band, and the break arrows.

The second is a board that runs the same calculation across a list of symbols on several timeframes at once. The board says which instruments have signalled and how recently; the chart under it shows you what produced the signal, so you do not have to attach a second indicator to act on what the table found.

The board

A row per symbol, a column per scanned timeframe, up to four columns and up to twenty eight symbols. It ships scanning fifteen symbols and is raised to twenty eight from one setting. The symbol list is comma separated, or the board can take the Market Watch list instead. Broker prefix and suffix are detected from the chart you are on, or given by hand. Out of the box the board scans four timeframes: M15, H1, H4 and D1.

A cell reads like ^14b: which side the signal was on, and how many bars ago it fired. The word flat means the calculation ran and found no direction. Three dots mean the cell has not been measured yet, and hovering it explains why in words once tooltips are switched on, which they are not by default. A signal older than the freshness threshold keeps its colour but is drawn quieter, so hue says direction and weight says how much it still matters. A row carrying a fresh signal anywhere in it gets a wash of the accent colour.

The AGREE column is the reason to use a board rather than eight charts. For each symbol it takes the visible timeframe columns, finds the majority side, and prints something like v3/4: the direction, and how many of the visible timeframes stand on it. When every visible timeframe agrees, the cell is drawn bold in that side's colour. A tie prints a dash and is deliberately not a verdict. With a single timeframe visible the column is removed entirely rather than printing 1/1, which would only restate the cell beside it.

Column headers are buttons. Click a timeframe header to sort by that column, freshest first, rows with nothing in it at the bottom; click it again to reverse. Click AGREE to sort by agreement, full agreement first. The active header carries the accent colour and a caret, so the sort state lives on the control itself. A separate Sort button cycles freshest, grade and name for a whole-board order.

A Show button cycles all, buys, sells and fresh. Buys and sells follow the AGREE verdict and not any single cell, so a row shown under buys always reads an up glyph in AGREE, and a tie appears under neither. This filters the view and not the calculation: a hidden row is still measured and can still alert.

The legend above the table decodes the notation in one line and can be switched off. This port does not grade, so the grade half of the notation is absent and the legend does not print it. Timeframe buttons show and hide a column without stopping the calculation behind it.

The visible row count is fitted to the chart pane and the row setting is a maximum. No page buttons are drawn when everything fits; when it does not, previous and next appear with the page number. Because the board never draws more rows than the pane holds, the page buttons are always on screen and always reachable, however tall the row setting is.

Two status lines are always on show: symbols ready of total, how long since the last update, signals in the lookback window; then either the watchdog line or a sentence explaining why nothing is showing.

Diagnostics

A second panel, off by default, answers the question "why is there no signal": symbol coverage, which series are short of bars, how many signals were found in the window, and how many symbols this indicator switched on in Market Watch to do its work. A cell that could not be measured is explained rather than left blank.

The chart indicator

Drawn in the price window: the zero lag average coloured by its side and unbroken across the break, the two edges of the volatility band as thin lines, two shades between them, and BUY and SELL arrows on the bar where the band was broken.

The settings sheet

Values covers the timeframe, the length that sets both the average's window and the ATR behind the band, seventy by default, and the band multiplier of 1.2, which is measured in peak ATRs. Styles covers the palette, the line and its width, the arrow size, the band and the two shades. Every Values row has steppers, a range and a sentence of help.

Alerts covers the master switch, the per-event switches, the four channels, the cooldown and a test button.

Three colour schemes, including a colour-blind safe one that uses blue and orange rather than red and green. Panel position, scheme, the sort, the filter, which columns are visible and every value changed on the sheet persist per chart across a timeframe change and a terminal restart. The interface is English.

Alerts

Off out of the box. A master switch sits on the panel itself, next to a Test alert button that fires through every channel currently on.

The events are a fresh BUY and a fresh SELL, declared separately for each scanned timeframe, plus data health, which speaks when a symbol loses or regains its data, plus a touch of the zero lag average on this chart, which belongs to the chart indicator rather than to anything the board found. There is a minimum grade setting for filtering by grade.

The channels are a popup window, a sound, a push to the mobile terminal and e-mail. The cooldown is kept per cell and per event, thirty minutes by default. Telegram is not part of this product.

Cost

The work is budgeted: a set number of symbols is refreshed per timer tick, so a long list spreads its load instead of stalling the terminal. The first pass is progressive and the panel reports the percentage measured.

Reading it from an EA

The chart indicator publishes fifteen 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 zero lag average 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 keeps the drawn line unbroken. Buffer 8 is the upper edge of the volatility band and buffer 9 is its lower edge. 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 the zero lag average as one unbroken series and buffer 14 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.

This map is the scanner's own and it is not the same as the free single chart indicator, which inserts an Override buffer at index 13 and publishes the unbroken line and the trend one place later. Read the list above rather than assuming the two are interchangeable.

The board itself is a panel and not a buffer. It is read by eye and by alert.

The single chart indicator behind this one, Zero-Lag Trend MTF, is free and carries the same engine. If you follow one symbol, take that one; this scanner exists for watching many at once.

Provenance

This is a port of the Zero Lag Trend family. The zero lag average is public and is Ehlers and Ric's, and the presentation with a volatility band was reproduced from the formulas, which makes a port by formula admissible. Three deviations are declared: on the first bars the shifted close is unavailable and the oldest close is used instead, with the average seeded from its first value, the ATR warmed by a running mean and the peak window progressive, where Pine returns nothing; the original starts with a neutral side and only takes a sign on the first crossing, and since this line's layout has no neutral side the line is drawn as rising until that first crossing; and a buffer is added for the ATR itself.

The product is called Zero-Lag Trend Scanner 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 board reads closed bars and counts a cell's age in closed bars. The chart indicator under it can show a signal on the bar still forming, and such a signal can be gone by the close. What has been published on a closed bar does not change afterwards.

Removing lag amplifies noise. A zero lag average overshoots turns, and the band exists to stop that overshoot from becoming a signal, not to stop it happening.

The band remembers the highest recent ATR. After a violent bar the band stays wide for a while, and during that time it takes a larger move to change the side.

The length and the multiplier move every break the product will ever report. Two configurations produce two different sets of arrows and neither of them is the true one.

AGREE counts timeframes, it does not estimate probability. Four timeframes agreeing means four correlated readings of one instrument agreed. A tie produces no verdict on purpose and is hidden by both the buys filter and the sells filter.

Scanning costs. Twenty-eight symbols on four timeframes is a hundred and twelve cells and will be felt on a slow machine; the budget setting is what you turn down.

Symbols your broker does not carry, and series with fewer bars than the settings need, cannot be measured, and the board says which and why rather than leaving the cell blank.

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