Detecting Round-Number Price Levels with Tick Normalization and Digit Analysis

Summary

The article presents an MQL5 indicator concept for identifying psychologically salient price levels across instruments with different quote precision. Its method first rounds prices to the tradable tick size, converts the normalized value to a string at the symbol’s displayed precision, and counts trailing zeros to create a ZeroSize strength score. A configurable minimum score determines which levels to display, while line style and prominence vary with the score. The article also proposes using higher minimum scores on longer chart timeframes and treating overlaps across timeframes as potential confluence areas.

The text offers examples on currency pairs, bitcoin, and gold, and gives suggested score thresholds by trading horizon. It outlines a basic trading framework with confirmation, buffers, scaling, trailing stops, and stop placement around major levels. However, the evidence is mostly illustrative and conceptual: the supplied material does not establish predictive performance through systematic testing. The digit-based score is a measure of displayed price formatting, so its interpretation depends on quote conventions and should be independently validated for each market and trading use.

Key ideas

• Normalize prices to the instrument’s tick size before evaluating whether a level is round.
• Counting trailing zeros in the displayed price produces the proposed ZeroSize strength measure.
• The indicator uses score thresholds and different line styles to limit chart clutter.
• The article recommends stronger round-number thresholds for higher timeframes and considers cross-timeframe overlap meaningful.
• The proposed trading uses confirmation and explicit risk controls, but the text supplies no systematic performance evidence.

Tags

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.