CISD, on MT4 and MT5, marks the price where a run of candles in one direction gave up, and then tells you whether the break of that price was a turn or just more of the same.
The second half is the part worth paying for, and it's expressed in something most people never look at: the line style.
What a change in state of delivery is here
Price delivers in runs. Several candles push one way, then one closes the other way. The tool takes the opening price of the first candle of that run and remembers it as a level.
Nothing has happened yet. The level is a claim, not an event. The change of state happens later, when a candle closes through that level. At that moment the run that built the level has been properly undone, and the line is drawn and labelled.
Close, not touch. A wick through the level does nothing at all.
Two ways to find the run
Liquidity Sweep, the default, wants a sweep first. The tool tracks swing highs and lows over a 10-bar pivot. When a candle's high goes above a stored swing high but its close comes back below it, that swing has been swept: the level and the wick that took it are drawn in grey. Only the run that starts after that sweep becomes a CISD candidate.
Classic drops the sweep requirement. Every colour flip creates a candidate level. You get many more lines and much less selection.
The difference in practice is large. Liquidity Sweep is asking for the specific sequence where price reached for stops, failed, and then delivered the other way. Classic is asking only that the candles changed colour.
Solid or dotted, and why it matters
Behind the drawing there's a single trend variable that holds the direction of the last confirmed CISD.
When a bearish CISD fires and the trend was not already bearish, the line is drawn solid: the state changed. When a bearish CISD fires and the trend was already bearish, the line is drawn dotted: nothing changed, this is the same delivery continuing.
So a screen full of dotted lines is a trend that keeps re-confirming itself. A solid line after a run of dotted ones is the first structural disagreement. Both are useful and they're not the same information, which is exactly why they don't get the same line.
I've not seen another tool in this family make that distinction on the chart, and it costs nothing to read once you know it's there.
| Ordinary structure-break indicator | This | |
|---|---|---|
| What defines the level | A swing high or low | The open of the first candle of the delivery run |
| Confirmation | Often a touch | A close through, always |
| Sweep required | No | Yes, in the default method |
| Reversal vs continuation | Same drawing | Solid vs dotted |
| Level lifetime | Indefinite | Expires after a set number of bars |
Levels expire
Maximum CISD Duration defaults to 100 bars. A level that hasn't been broken within that window is deleted from the chart and from memory. Unswept swing levels go the same way.
That's the setting that keeps a long chart readable, and it's also the reason a level you were watching can vanish. It didn't fail; it timed out.
Minimum CISD Duration is the mirror, defaulting to 0. Raise it and a level has to survive at least that many bars before its break counts, which throws out the breaks that happen two candles after the level was created.
Alerts are off when you install it
Notification type ships as Do not notificate, and the Telegram fields ship with obvious placeholders. This is deliberate rather than an oversight, because on the Classic method with alerts on, a busy M5 chart will talk to you constantly.
Set it to Alert once you've decided which detection method you want and how long you want levels to live. The two signal switches, one for buy/sell and one for volatility change, are separate.
What it draws, and what it doesn't
Horizontal lines with a CISD label at the midpoint, plus the swept swing levels and their wicks in grey.
No indicator buffers. Every mark is a chart object, so iCustom gets you nothing from this one and an EA can't read the levels directly. Alerts are the way out.
No zones, no arrows on the candle, no dashboard, no higher-timeframe view. It draws lines and it tells you what kind of line each one is.
Where it's weak
One trend variable for the whole chart. Reversal and continuation are decided against a single running state, so the very first CISD after you load the indicator is always drawn solid, because there was no previous state to agree with.
The swing detector needs bars to its right. A swing high isn't a swing high until the bars after it confirm it, so a sweep is recognised a few candles after it happened. The level is placed correctly in history; you just don't get it in real time at the sweep itself.
Classic mode is noisy on purpose and there's no filter for it. No size condition, no volume condition, no ATR gate. If Classic gives you too much, the answer is Liquidity Sweep, not a setting.
The default lookback is 1000 bars. Set it to 0 for the full history if you want the whole chart marked, and expect the first load to take a moment on a long Daily chart.
Questions you'll have
Does CISD repaint? No. Levels are created and confirmed on closed bars behind a new-bar check. A confirmed line stays where it was drawn. Levels that were never broken get deleted when they age out, which is removal, not redrawing.
What's the difference between a solid and a dotted CISD line? Solid means the break changed the trend state. Dotted means the trend was already going that way and this break just continued it.
Why did a level disappear without being broken? It aged past Maximum CISD Duration, 100 bars by default.
Which detection method should I use? Liquidity Sweep, the default, unless you specifically want every colour flip marked. Classic produces several times as many levels with no filter behind them.
Why am I not getting alerts? Notification type ships as Do not notificate. Change it to Alert, or fill in the email or Telegram fields.
Can an EA read the levels? No. The indicator publishes no buffers; everything is a chart object. Use the alerts.
Best timeframe? M15 and above at the default 10-bar swing length. On M5 raise the swing length before judging it.
MT4? Both platforms are included, one download each. Same two methods, same expiry rule, same solid-and-dotted convention.
Support
Message me through the site with a screenshot, the symbol and the timeframe, and I can tell you why a particular line is solid or dotted, or why a level went away. Updates are included for as long as your subscription runs.
Analysis tool. It places no trades and makes no profitability claim. Past price behaviour is not a guide to future price behaviour.