An MT4 candle timer indicator guide - Find out when the next candle begins
Among many categorizations of online trading, there is one that is associated with time: traders can either open new positions and leave them open for a
long period of time (like days or weeks, even months) or open and close them within a single day. These types of short-term trading strategies can last for hours, minutes, or even seconds.
Within this strategy, it is very important to keep track of the time and know when to open or close the position. At one point, the price of an asset may be really low and very beneficial for the buyers of that asset; but the market developments can be so sudden that the same price can instantly rise and become very disadvantageous for the same buyers. The same goes for the sellers with the opposite conditions.
So, there are a few main points that you should consider when placing trades with the candle timer indicator.
- The timing
- The opportunity
- The market trend
This goes to show that knowing the best time to place a trade can have quite a large effect on the success of the position. One way of keeping track of time is to use the candle timer forex indicator for MT4.
With the candle timer indicator, which also has other names like candle time left, candle countdown timer, or candlestick timer indicator, enables traders to see the remaining time of the current timeframe, as well as when the new one will begin. The last name variation that we mentioned, the candlestick timer, shows that this indicator is available within the candlestick chart but traders can also use it for other types of charts.
So, what the candle timer indicator basically does is it tracks the elapsed time of the current candle and gives the exact minutes and seconds remaining for the new candle to start. As noted above, this feature is especially useful for those who perform short-term trades, for whom every second is important. With the candle timer indicator, they can know exactly when the same timeframe begins and make trading decisions accordingly.
How to download the candle timer indicator for MT4?
Usually, there is no pre-installed candle time and spread indicator MT4 software offers to the users. That is why you need to find the indicator on their own and install it on the platform.
While there are many versions of the candle time indicator from different providers, all of them are the same in one major aspect: they all do the countdown for the next candle to occur. That is why there is not much of a difference which specific indicator you choose; just search in Google and find the most suitable version to your needs.
Once the download is finished, the next step is to install the indicator on MetaTrader 4. Usually, the indicators downloaded from the internet come as “.zip” or “.rar” archives, which means you need to extract the files within the archive to the MT4 folder of the original installation. More specifically, you need to open the MT4 folder, then go to the MQL4 folder and extract all the files within the folder named Indicators.
After that, you have to restart MT4 and look for the Indicators sub-menu under the Navigator window. There you will find the MT4 candlestick timer indicator which you can then insert in the candlestick chart.
Another key feature of this indicator to mention here is that it allows users to customize many elements according to their preferences. For example, when double-clicking on the indicator, the window will appear where you can change the location and color of the timer, as well as set different timeframes and even choose to get notifications when there are only a few seconds left for the new candle to appear.
Using candle timer in the actual trading
As noted above, the candle countdown indicator MT4 platform features are beneficial to those traders that use short-term trading strategies. However, just this indicator alone is not enough to actually know, which position to choose: long (buy) or short (sell). This indicator merely shows the exact time when the next candle will appear.
But this doesn’t mean that the candle timer indicator is useless. Quite the opposite, actually: when combined with other indicators that give out signals about which direction the trend is going to take, the candle timer becomes an incremental element of the trade.
The MT4 candle timer alongside Bollinger Bands
The most popular indicator used alongside the candle timer is
Bollinger Bands and we will discover how they complement each other. First things first, Bollinger Bands is a volatility channel that enables traders to track the price fluctuations of an asset and see how volatile it is.
This indicator uses one simple moving average as a baseline and two standard deviation bands above and below the baseline. Basically, if the two bands are far apart from the baseline, it means that the asset is very volatile, and if they are closer to the baseline, then the asset price is relatively stable.
One mainstream theory behind this indicator is that when the bands go too close to the baseline, the actual price tends to break out of the bands and quite higher/lower prices. This is when traders start receiving the buy/sell signals. But prices can change pretty quickly in this short-term period.
That is where it comes handy to use the candle time left indicator MT4 features. Whenever the Bollinger Bands start to shrink too much, a trader may start thinking about placing an order depending on which way the price breaks out: buy an asset if the price breaks out above or sell it if the price breaks out below. As to when to actually place the order, they can use the candle timer indicator to wait for the next candle to emerge and start the position right away.
