SMC Trade Planner draws market structure, liquidity sweeps and swing rails on MT4 and MT5, and then does the thing most structure indicators stop short of: it puts a complete trade plan on the chart. Entry, stop, three targets, and the retracement levels of the current leg.
What the levels actually are
Worth knowing before you use them, because they are simpler than they look:
- Entry is the close of the signal bar.
- Stop is that bar's low minus
atrRisk × ATR(atrLen)for a long, or its high plus the same for a short. ATR of 10 bars at 1.0 by default. - TP1, TP2 and TP3 are one, two and three times the distance from entry to stop.
So the targets are pure R multiples. They are not structural levels, they are not previous highs, and nothing about the chart to the right of the entry feeds into them. That's a perfectly reasonable way to place targets, and it's not what the surrounding structure labels lead you to assume, so it's worth saying plainly.
The 0.500 and 0.618 levels drawn separately are structural — they're the retracement of the current leg, and they update as the leg does.
Signals
The BUY and SELL arrows come from a SuperTrend, with sensitivity choosing the ATR multiplier. Here is the whole table:
| Setting | ATR multiplier | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Low | 6.8 | Very wide band, few signals — the default |
| Medium | 2.5 | Narrowest band, most signals |
| High | 3.0 | Between the two |
Read that again, because the middle two are the wrong way round. "Medium" uses a smaller multiplier than "High", so it produces more signals, not fewer. That's how the code is written; I've left the behaviour as it is rather than silently changing what an existing user's charts look like, and I'd rather you knew than discovered it.
The default is Low, which is the quiet one.
Structure and liquidity
BOS and CHoCH on closes past swings, with SwH / SwL rails marking the swings themselves and extending right. LIQUZ marks a liquidity sweep — a level taken out and rejected — with cooldownPeriod bars of silence afterwards so a single messy area doesn't produce five of them.
The preset switch is the main control
InpPreset decides what gets drawn, and this is the thing to understand about the settings dialog: the two dozen individual switches below it only take effect when the preset is set to Custom. Change one while a preset is active and nothing happens, with no warning.
The default preset draws sweeps, swing rails, signals, the level set, fair value gaps, the current structure with its Fib, and the trend table. Off by default and available under Custom: demand and supply zones, order blocks, two different support/resistance modules, two trendline modules, inside-bar breakouts, moving averages, a Keltner ribbon, RSI bar colouring, VWAP, an opening-range breakout with a configurable session, a volume profile, a volume histogram, HH/LH/HL/LL labels and a zigzag.
That's a lot of surface area. It is also why the preset exists.
The multi-timeframe table
Six timeframes, each showing Up or Down, from either a two-EMA comparison or a SuperTrend depending on trendCalc.
A cell reads .. when that timeframe's history hasn't been downloaded yet. On a freshly opened chart, or a symbol you've not looked at before, expect to see .. for a while and expect it to fill in on its own. If it never fills, the terminal hasn't got the history for that timeframe — scroll one of those charts back once and it will.
Both charts above were taken on a terminal opened from cold, which is why their tables are still loading. Here is the MT4 build on a terminal that already had the history, with the same six timeframes filled in:
Where it's weak
The individual switches are ignored unless the preset is Custom. First thing to know, and the most likely reason a setting seems to do nothing.
Targets are R multiples, not levels. As above.
The stop is ATR-based, not structural. On a tool built around swings and sweeps, the stop is placed a fixed ATR distance beyond the signal bar rather than beyond the swing that justifies the trade. If you trade structure, you will probably want to move it.
The target lines are drawn in the bullish colour on both sides. On a short setup the three targets below price are teal and the stop above is red. The prices are right; the colours don't switch with direction.
The plan shown is the last signal's, however old. The entry, stop and target rails persist until the next signal replaces them. They are not a live trade and there is no invalidation — a plan from twenty bars ago looks exactly like one from this bar.
The table sits at a fixed screen position. It can land on top of the price action, as it does on the EURUSD chart above. There's no drag-and-drop.
Sensitivity has three settings and two of them are mislabelled, as above.
It draws a lot. InpMaxBars caps processing at 1500 bars and InpMaxSignals caps labels at 60 per type, both for good reason. Turning on the optional modules under Custom multiplies that quickly.
Questions you'll have
Why doesn't changing a switch do anything? Because the preset overrides them. Set InpPreset to Custom first.
Where do TP1, TP2 and TP3 come from? One, two and three times the entry-to-stop distance. They aren't structural levels.
Where does the stop come from? The signal bar's low or high, plus or minus atrRisk × ATR(atrLen).
Are the 0.5 and 0.618 levels the same thing as the targets? No. Those are the retracement of the current structure leg and they do come from the chart.
Why does the trend table show ..? That timeframe's history hasn't downloaded yet. It fills in on its own once it has.
Which sensitivity gives the fewest signals? Low, by a wide margin. Medium gives the most, despite the name.
Does it repaint? Structure needs pivots to confirm, so labels appear a few bars after the swing. The plan rails move to the newest signal when one fires. Closed-bar structure isn't rewritten.
Does it place trades? No. It draws the levels; you do everything else.
Can an EA read it? Signals and the moving-average layers are buffers. Structure, rails and the plan are chart objects.
Best timeframe? H1 and H4. The default sensitivity is a very wide SuperTrend, which needs room to work.
MT4? Both platforms are included, one download each. Same structure, same plan, same preset system.
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.