I am pretty new both to forex and the forum. While i was studying the indicators today, i came up with a question and couldnt find a solid answer around. Btw i am using a demo account on a english broker using MT4.
What i wonder is; there are some indicators i guess using other data than just OHLC of periods. I am guessing some may use the volume of MT4 and again i guess its just the volume of my broker’s server. So this may be pretty deceptive. Anyone knows if i am right or wrong, and if i am partly right can you tell me which indicators are using data which depend on my broker’s server?
All the standard (and 99% of custom) indicators depend on the infomation your broker sends to MT4, where else would they be getting the infomation from? Most depend on price, which is dependant on your broker, as well as volumes, etc. I would say don’t worry about it if you are using price data (although some brokers are better for volume data than others), as broker prices don’t vary enough to mess with indicators.
Yes, i mean the prices can vary but very limited compared to volumes. What i was asking is which indicators depends on very specific data? Forexample rsi and stoch, do they depend only the prices? If they also depend on volumes or the buy/sell data from the server, wouldnt it be so dramatically different on different servers?
RSI and stochastics are both price-based indicators. Generally speaking, if it doesn’t say “volume” in the indicator name is some fashion, it’s probably just a price study. If in doubt, look up the calculation of the indicator. Most are readily searchable.
The raw price feed will be similar for all brokers. But one difference you should be aware of is that the 4H and daily bars will vary from broker to broker depending on the end of day time relative to GMT. Most are 0 to 3 hours from GMT and a few are based on EST (so I have been told). So comparing daily charts won’t be identical. But this should not matter as you have to trade with your broker and that is the only feed that matters.
This is my golden rule for indicators, [B][I]if you don’t know how they are calculated then you don’t know what they are actually showing you[/I][/B]. If you don’t understand them you are unlikley to be using them correctly! Do some reading first and formulate a strategy BEFORE picking an indicator, I cannot stress that enough.