Tracing Custom Indicator Buffers on a Trading Chart

Summary

The document describes a chart utility for inspecting the buffer outputs of custom trading indicators. A user specifies an installed indicator and the number of buffers to trace; moving a vertical line across the chart changes the bar being examined and updates the displayed output. This can help diagnose indicators, especially arrow indicators whose empty-value convention is unclear.

The example describes tracing a Bollinger Bands indicator and explains that arrow indicators may represent absent signals with zero, an empty value, or another configured value. The tool can expose those outputs visually, but the article does not provide performance evidence or explain how to interpret indicator values beyond this inspection use. It is limited to custom indicators, supports only their default parameters, and allows at most one tracer instance on a chart; standard indicators require other tools.

Key ideas

• The utility displays buffer values from an installed custom indicator for the bar selected on a chart.
• Moving the vertical line changes the bar whose indicator output is traced.
• Arrow indicators may encode missing signals as zero, an empty value, or another configured value.
• The tool is limited to custom indicators using default parameters and one instance per chart.

Tags

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