Swing Detector by Pullback (Smart Money Concepts) - MetaTrader 5용 지표

Almost every structure-based method starts with the same question: which highs and lows actually matter? Everything downstream — market structure, BOS and CHoCH, order blocks, liquidity levels — is built on top of that one answer, so the definition you pick decides what the rest of your analysis sees.

There are several common ways to answer it. The best known is the 3-candle pattern (the fractal): a candle whose high is above both neighbours is a swing high. It is symmetric, trivial to compute, and it is what most swing indicators use. Others widen the window to 5 or 7 candles, or filter candidates by a minimum move in points or ATR.

This indicator uses a different definition — the pullback definition used in Trading Hub 3.0. Instead of asking whether a candle is taller than its neighbours, it asks whether price came back and rejected that candle. A high becomes a swing only once the market trades back through the low of the candle that made it. Nothing is decided by shape; everything is decided by what price does afterwards.

The practical difference: a fractal describes geometry, while a pullback describes an event. Because a pullback is an event, it also tells you when the swing became valid — and that timestamp is what makes a non-repainting implementation possible.

How the rule works

The detector is never looking for both sides at once. It searches for one side at a time, and it holds exactly three pieces of information:

The reference is the important part. When a candle sets a new highest high, that same candle also supplies the level that will later confirm it: its own low. Price must come back through that low for the high to count.

Reading the figure:

• A — a leg opens. The tracked high and the reference low both come from one candle.
• B — every higher high replaces both values. The high is still provisional; nothing is drawn.
• C — a candle finally trades below the reference low. That is the pullback, and it confirms the tracked high as a swing high.
• D — the confirming candle immediately opens the search for a low, mirrored: track the lowest low, the reference is its high, a break above confirms it.

Because confirming one side always flips the search to the other, swing highs and lows alternate automatically. There is no separate rule enforcing it and no comparison against earlier swings.

The rules, candle by candle

On every closed candle the detector asks two independent questions: did this candle make a new extreme? and did it break the reference? Four combinations are possible per direction.

Rows 1–4 and 5–8 are exact mirrors, which is why the whole engine is only a few dozen lines.

The rare case: a candle that breaks both directions

Rows 4 and 8 deserve their own explanation. Usually a candle either extends the leg or breaks the reference. An outside bar can do both at once — it makes a new high and trades below the reference low in the same candle.

Both rules then claim it, and they contradict each other. Treating it as an extension throws away a real break; treating it as a break would confirm a high that this very candle has already exceeded.

The resolution is to let the candle be the swing itself:

1. Its own high is confirmed as the swing high — not the older tracked high, which it has just taken out.
2. The same candle then opens the opposite leg: the tracked low becomes its low and the reference becomes its high.

So one candle carries both a swing high and the start of the low leg. On the chart this shows up as a marker above and below the same bar, with a vertical leg between them — which is exactly what happened inside that candle.

It does not repaint

The tracked extreme is provisional and is never drawn. A swing is written to the chart only on the candle that confirms it, and once written it is never moved, recoloured or removed. Only closed candles are evaluated; the forming candle is ignored entirely.

The trade-off is honest and worth stating: confirmation lag. The newest swing appears only after the break that validates it. If you want a marker the instant a new high prints, this is the wrong tool — that marker would have to move later, which is repainting.

Inputs

Detection

How to choose: start with Wick. If you are working on M1–M15, or on a symbol with long noisy wicks such as gold or an index CFD, switch to Close — it removes most of the swings caused by a single spike without changing the logic anywhere else. A higher timeframe is the other way to get larger structure; the rule itself has no sensitivity or period setting to tune.

Display

Turning both markers and legs off leaves a purely computational instance — useful when an EA reads the buffers and you do not want anything on the chart.

Alerts

Alerts fire only on live updates, never while the indicator loads history, and only once per swing.

Using it from an EA

Two buffers, both non-empty only on confirmed swings (empty value is 0.0):

int h = iCustom(_Symbol, _Period, "SMC_Pullback");
double buf[];
CopyBuffer(h, 0, 0, 100, buf);   // swing highs

The detection engine lives in a single self-contained class, CPullbackDetector, with no chart or buffer dependencies — it takes the price arrays and reports confirmed swings, so it can be copied straight into an EA if you would rather not go through iCustom.

What it deliberately does not do

This indicator stops at the swing points. It does not label HH/HL/LH/LL, and it does not derive BOS, CHoCH, IDM, order blocks or liquidity levels. Those are separate steps that need a reliable set of swings first — which is exactly what this provides.

The project is supported on MQL5 Algo Forge. You can find the code and next updates at below link.

The repo is here: https://forge.mql5.io/SandroBegashvil/SMC-Pullback-CodeBase