Forex FlexBox Indicator takes advantage of breakouts in a more flexible way by drawing breakout boxes anytime one is detected, without assuming that “boxes” form according to a predictable schedule (like the famous London Breakout Indicator & Strategy). The FlexBox indicator can be used on any timeframe.

“I’ve been interested in breakout strategies for some time. I like them because they are price-driven with little or no lag involved and reflect the reality of the market – there are trends and periods of relative inactivity between trends during which price does not gain or lose much. Many popular strategies have been developed using boxes and breakouts (Big Ben comes to mind), in fact my primary trading strategy is based on daily highs and lows which is, for all practical purposes, a box.”

Devoloper

The FlexBox indicator is posted beneath and can be utilized in any timeframe. First, a few concepts on simple strategies to make use of it:

Entries – Enter the trade at the close of a bar outside the box. Wait for the current bar to close completely.

Stoploss – Place a stop loss at the opposite side of the box from the breakout (or add a few pips if the box has a small price range).

Exits – Exit when the entry rule is met for a trade in the opposite direction.

The user-accessible parameters are

ROCPeriod – Boxes are formed based on an embedded ROC indicator. The default here is two, but I have tried values up to 5 without changing the results much – boxes just start a bit later.

BoxThreshold – This is important. After experimentation, I’ve settled on default of 12.0 but this may need to be smaller for timeframes shorter than 1 hour (which is the timeframe I recommend).

BoxMinBars – The number of bars in a box before it actually appears on the chart. Default is 3 because it works for me.

BoxColor – self-explanatory.