AlphaTrend Signals draws two thick stepped lines on MT4 and MT5 with arrows where they cross. Before anything else, here is the thing that makes the chart readable: the red line is the blue line, two bars ago. It isn't a second calculation. It's a delayed copy.
Once you know that, the whole display makes sense. Where the red line sits above the blue one, the trend line has been falling for the last two bars. Where blue is above red, it has been rising. And where they cross, the line has just changed what it was doing.
The line itself
Two candidates on every bar, both derived from ATR over AP bars:
upT = low - ATR * Coeff
downT = high + ATR * Coeff
Money flow decides which one is in play. While MFI is at or above 50 the line takes upT, but only when that is higher than where the line already sits, so it climbs and never falls. Below 50 the rule inverts and the line ratchets downward off the highs instead.
That's a trailing stop with a momentum switch on it, and the flat shelves in the picture are bars where the new candidate was worse than the level already held, so the level was kept.
The ATR here is a plain average of true range over AP bars, not Wilder's smoothing. Most MetaTrader indicators use the Wilder version. This one uses the simple mean, which matters more than it sounds: a single violent bar sits in the average at full weight for exactly AP bars and then drops out all at once, so the band width can step down abruptly for no reason visible on the chart.
Where the arrows come from
Not from the money-flow flip. From the line crossing its own two-bar-old value.
Written out, a buy needs the line to be above where it was two bars ago and to have been at or below that two-bar-old level on the previous bar. Because the line is a ratchet, the first half is true on most bars of a healthy trend. The second half is what makes the signal rare: it requires the line to have been flat or falling immediately before.
So in practice the arrows mark the end of a flat shelf — the bar where the trailing stop starts moving again after having held one level. That's a genuinely useful thing to be told, and it is not the same thing as a trend change.
There's also an alternation filter on top. A buy is suppressed unless the most recent sell is more recent than the most recent buy, and vice versa, so the arrows strictly take turns. One consequence: the first signals after you attach the indicator are swallowed, because neither a previous buy nor a previous sell exists yet.
Coeff is the setting that changes everything
Coeff multiplies the ATR distance. At 1.0 the line tracks close and the shelves are short. Here is the same chart at 2.0:
The line stops reacting to pullbacks entirely and holds one level through a whole session. Fewer signals, later signals, and far fewer of them wrong about the direction. Which end of that trade-off you want is the only real decision this indicator asks you to make.
AP at 14 sets both the ATR window and the MFI/RSI window at once. There's no way to have a fast momentum switch on a slow band.
MFI or RSI
NoVolumeData swaps the money flow index for RSI. Use it on any symbol where the volume figure is meaningless — most CFD feeds — and VolumeType decides whether MFI uses tick count or reported volume when you leave it on.
This matters more than a checkbox usually does, because the 50 line is a hard binary switch with no hysteresis. When momentum hovers around 50 the line flips sides repeatedly, and whether it hovers there at all depends on which of the two indicators you picked.
| Moving average | ATR trailing stop | This | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direction decided by | Slope | Price vs stop | MFI or RSI against 50 |
| Moves against the trend | Yes | No | No |
| Second line | n/a | n/a | The same line, delayed two bars |
| Signal | Cross of two averages | Stop hit | Line crosses its own two-bar-old value |
| What a signal actually means | Averages changed order | Trend broke | The line resumed moving |
What you get
Two plotted lines, an optional fill between them, Wingdings arrows at the signals, and three separate alert families: the buy/sell signals, price crossing the line, and the candle's low or high crossing the line. Each can be set to fire on the forming bar or only once the bar has closed, and AlertConfirmed is on by default, which is the right way round.
Notifications go through the shared block — alert, email, push or Telegram — deduplicated once per bar per message.
Where it's weak
The second line carries no new information. It's the first line delayed, so it can never disagree with anything. If you were hoping for a fast line and a slow line confirming each other, that isn't what this is, and I'd rather say so than let the two colours imply it.
The arrows are small and the lines are thick. On MT5 they're 10pt Wingdings drawn near three-pixel lines, and on a busy chart they're easy to miss entirely. The MT4 build draws them as real arrow buffers and they're considerably more visible. Zoom in, or rely on the alert.
Signals are chart objects on MT5, and they can be removed. A signal that appears mid-bar and unwinds before the close has its arrow deleted. Leave AlertConfirmed on and this stops mattering.
The momentum switch has no dead band. MFI at 49.9 and MFI at 50.1 produce opposite behaviour. Around the middle the line can change sides on consecutive bars, and nothing smooths that.
The ATR is a simple mean. As above: shocks leave the average abruptly rather than decaying out of it.
Nothing scales to the instrument. Coeff 1.0 and AP 14 are the same numbers on gold H1 and on EURUSD H4. Compare the two charts above and you can see the character of the line is quite different on each; the settings that suit one are not the settings that suit the other.
There are no levels of any kind. No stop, no target, no invalidation price. The line is the level, and what you do with it is entirely your problem.
The fill is off by default and stays a cosmetic choice. It shades the gap between a line and its own delayed copy, which looks informative and isn't.
Questions you'll have
Does it repaint? Closed bars don't change. The forming bar's line value moves as the bar develops, and an arrow on the forming bar is deleted if the condition is gone by the close.
Why are there two lines? The second one is the first one shifted two bars right. It exists so that the crossing between them can be used as the signal.
What does an arrow actually mean? That the trailing line started moving again after being flat or moving the other way. It's a resumption, not a forecast.
Why do Buy and Sell strictly alternate? There's a filter that suppresses a second signal in the same direction until one has fired the other way.
Should I use MFI or RSI? RSI if your feed's volume is unreliable, which on most CFD symbols it is. Set NoVolumeData to true for that.
What should Coeff be? Start at 1.0 to see the mechanics, then look at 1.5 to 2.0 for something you'd actually leave on a chart. Compare the two gold charts above.
Is this the same as the other AlphaTrend on this site? Same underlying trailing line, different build. This one adds the MFI/RSI switch as an input, the delayed second line with its crossing signals, and the price-cross and candle-cross alert families. They're licensed separately and either works on its own.
Can an EA read it? Yes. On MT5 the line is buffer 2 and its delayed copy is buffer 3. On MT4 the arrows are readable buffers as well.
Best timeframe? H1 and H4. On M5 the momentum switch crosses 50 too often and the line changes sides constantly.
MT4? Both platforms are included, one download each. Same maths and same signals; MT4 draws the arrows as buffers, which look bolder.
Support
Send me a message with a screenshot, the symbol and the timeframe, and I'll tell you what the tool was doing on that bar.
Analysis tool. It places no trades and makes no profitability claim. Past price behaviour is not a guide to future price behaviour.