Gann Swings Indicator (XVI) for MT4

Gann Swings XVI is a free MetaTrader 4 chart overlay that plots alternating swing highs and swing lows directly on your price chart, using a rule-based, N-bar swing count instead of a fixed lookback or percentage. You can download the MT4 version free from mt4indicators.com and load it straight onto any chart.

What Is Gann Swings XVI?

This indicator identifies swing points the way a discretionary Gann-style trader would count them by hand: it tracks the current swing high and swing low, and waits for a set number of consecutive bars to make a new extreme in the opposite direction before it confirms a reversal and plots a new swing point. That consecutive-bar count is controlled by the kind input. Per the indicator’s own code comments, kind=1 treats every single opposing bar as a new swing (a minor, short-term swing count), kind=2 (the default) requires two consecutive opposing bars, and kind=3 requires three — giving you progressively larger, more significant swing structure the higher you set it.

The swing highs and lows are drawn as a connected zigzag line across two buffers, HighSwings and LowSwings, so visually it looks like a standard zigzag indicator, but the underlying logic is Gann’s consecutive-bar swing counting rather than a percentage or ATR-based zigzag.

Key Features

• Zigzag-style swing high/low line built from a configurable N-bar consecutive count (kind), not a fixed percentage or point threshold.
• ShowHighLow option plots small arrow markers on the currently active, not-yet-reversed swing high and swing low, so you can see where the live extreme sits before a reversal is confirmed.
• ShowOutSideBars option specifically flags outside bars — bars whose range exceeds both the current swing high and swing low in the same candle — marking them with an up or down arrow depending on whether that bar closed bullish or bearish.
• MoveLastSwing option lets the most recently plotted swing point keep re-anchoring to a new, more extreme bar as price keeps extending, rather than locking it in immediately.
• Runs entirely on the main chart window, so it overlays directly on your candles with no separate subwindow needed.

How to Use It

Copy GannSwingsXVI.mq4 into your MT4 terminal’s MQL4/Indicators folder, restart or refresh the Navigator panel, and drag it onto a chart. The only inputs you typically need to touch are kind (start with the default of 2 and increase to 3 if you want fewer, more significant swings, or drop to 1 for a very granular, short-term swing count), and the two boolean toggles for outside bars and the active high/low markers.

Reading the chart is straightforward once it’s loaded: each connected point on the zigzag line is a confirmed, or currently active, swing high or swing low. Many traders use swing structure like this to define trend — a sequence of rising swing lows and rising swing highs suggests an uptrend in Gann terms, while falling swing highs and falling swing lows suggest a downtrend. The outside-bar markers, when ShowOutSideBars is on, are worth watching separately, since an outside bar that engulfs both the current swing high and low is often treated as a volatility or exhaustion signal in its own right, independent of the swing count.

It’s important to understand, directly from the code, that the most recent swing point on the chart is not final the moment it’s drawn. The indicator actively erases and relocates a swing point, setting its buffer value back to zero, whenever price continues extending in the same direction without yet satisfying the reversal count — and if you enable MoveLastSwing, that behavior is explicit and by design: the last swing marker keeps sliding forward to whatever bar currently holds the most extreme high or low. Treat the last one or two swing points on the right edge of your chart as provisional until price actually reverses and a new opposing swing is confirmed further along.

Best Timeframes / Best Use Cases

Because the swing definition is based on a consecutive-bar count rather than a fixed distance, Gann Swings XVI scales naturally across timeframes — a kind=2 setting on an M15 chart identifies short-term intraday structure, while the same setting on a Daily chart maps out weeks-long swings. It’s best suited to traders who think in terms of market structure — swing highs, swing lows, and outside-bar breakouts — rather than pure oscillator-based entries. Given the explicit re-anchoring of the last swing point, it fits swing trading and structural analysis over many bars better than tick-level scalping, where every point needs to be final the instant it prints.

Final Thoughts

Gann Swings XVI gives you a rules-based way to mark up swing structure instead of eyeballing highs and lows manually, and the kind input gives you real control over how sensitive that structure is. Just keep in mind that, like any swing or zigzag-style tool, the most recent point on the chart can still move until a reversal is fully confirmed — use it to read established structure and trend context, not as a fixed, un-repainting arrow signal on the current bar.