Protected Highs and Lows

Protected Highs and Lows draws the one swing that matters right now, on MT4 and MT5: the
high price has to close above, or the low it has to close below, for structure to change.
Everything else on the chart follows from that single level.

The protected level, and the staircase it leaves

Most structure indicators label a break after it happens. This one draws the level whose
break would be the next event, and updates it as price makes new swings.

In an uptrend, the protected low is the last swing low that price would have to close below
for the trend to be in question. It ratchets up as new higher lows form, and the blue
staircase behind price is that history. In a downtrend, the red staircase above price is
the protected high.

The result is that the level in front of you is never a suggestion. It's the exact price at
which the labels on this chart would change.

BOS and MSS

Two labels, and they mean different things:

• BOS is a break in the direction the structure already had. Continuation.
• MSS is a break the other way, which is the shift.

Candles are coloured to the current structure direction, teal for bull, red for bear, so
the state is readable without finding the last label. Trend Candles turns that off.

Pivot Strength is 1, and that's deliberate

Pivot Strength defaults to 1, meaning a swing is confirmed one bar after it forms. That's
fast, and it means you see structure early.

The tradeoff is honest and it's the main thing to understand before running this: a pivot
strength of 1 finds every little wiggle. On a quiet M15 chart you'll get more BOS labels
than you want. Raise it to 2 or 3 and the picture calms down at the cost of seeing the
change later.

Two pullback filters, both off by default

This is where the tool goes further than the usual structure indicator, and both switches
are off until you turn them on:

Use Valid Pullback Criteria. Before a swing high can produce a protected low, price
must first have closed below the low of the candle that made that swing high. In other
words the market has to have actually pulled back, not just printed a high and carried on.

Specific Pullback Candle Criteria. A refinement of the same idea. If the swing high was
made by a down-close candle, the check walks back to the most recent up-close candle and
uses its low instead.

Turn the first one on if you're getting protected levels that never felt like real
retracements. Turn the second on only if you're already using the first and still want it
tighter.

Where it draws and where it doesn't

Show Protected Trail gives you the staircase. Extend unmitigated trail line runs the
current level out to the right so you can see exactly where it sits relative to price, and
it's off by default because on a busy chart the extension crosses everything.

Show Retracements (off) adds 30, 50 and 70 percent levels of the previous zone.
Show OB candle (off) marks the order block candle in the direction of trend.

There's also Put trail value to buffer, which is how you'd read the protected level from
an EA. Off by default; the plotted lines are for the chart, the buffer is for code.

The scanner switch

For Protected_Highs_Lows_Scanner Read Only is the first input, and it does something
drastic: it turns off every drawing and every alert so a scanner can read the buffers
across many symbols without decorating charts it isn't looking at.

If you ever find the indicator loading and doing absolutely nothing, that's the switch.

MT4 and MT5

Same pivots, same labels, same trail. Below is the MT4 build on the same gold chart.

Repainting, honestly

Structure is decided on closed bars and the calculation only runs when a new bar opens.
Labels and trail steps that have been drawn don't move.

The confirmation delay is real though. With Pivot Strength at 1 a swing needs one bar to
confirm, so the newest step in the staircase is always at least one bar behind the extreme
it came from. Raise the strength and that delay grows with it. There's no setting where you
get confirmed structure with no delay, here or anywhere.

What it doesn't do

• No entries, stops or targets. The protected level is a level, not a stop loss, though
  people use it as one.
• No multi-timeframe display. One chart. The MTF switch is for the companion scanner.
• Alerts are BOS and MSS only. Nothing fires when the protected level moves.
• Label type is a single choice for both directions: all, BOS only, or CHoCH only.
• A lot of surface area is off by default — retracements, order block candles, the
  trail extension. That's the right default, but it means the chart you get on first load
  is not everything it can do.

Settings I'd start with

H1 or H4, defaults, with Extend unmitigated trail line turned on so you can see where the
current level actually is.

If the labels are too frequent, raise Pivot Strength before you change anything else.
That single number controls how noisy the whole thing is.

Turn on Use Valid Pullback Criteria once you've watched it for a few days and can see
which protected lows you'd have rejected by eye.

Questions you'll have

Does Protected Highs and Lows repaint? No. Structure comes from confirmed pivots, the
calculation runs on the bar open, and nothing drawn moves afterwards. A pivot needs
Pivot Strength bars to confirm, so the newest step lags by that much.

What's the difference between BOS and MSS? BOS is a break in the existing direction.
MSS is a break against it, which is the structure shift.

What exactly is a protected low? The swing low price must close below for the bullish
structure to break. It ratchets up as higher lows form.

Why so many labels on my M15 chart? Pivot Strength is 1 by default. Raise it.

Can my EA read the protected level? Turn on Put trail value to buffer and read the
buffer with iCustom.

Why is the indicator drawing nothing? Check the first input. For Protected_Highs_Lows_Scanner Read Only disables all drawing and alerts.

What do the pullback criteria do? They require price to have actually retraced past the
swing candle before a protected level is accepted. Both are off by default.

MT4? Both builds are included, one download each.

Both platform builds come with a subscription. This listing makes no profitability claim:
the tool tells you which price would change the structure reading, and nothing about that
level predicts whether price gets there.