Glitch Index is a free MT5 oscillator by mladen that plots in its own sub-window as a colored histogram and matching line, measuring how far price has stretched away from a momentum-adjusted moving average, expressed as a clean percentage. It’s an instant download built for traders who want a quick visual read on when a move has gone further than its recent average would suggest.

What the Formula Is Actually Doing

The core building block is a custom incremental SMA (iSma) calculated over the inpSmaPeriod input (default 30). But instead of comparing price directly to that SMA, the indicator first calculates rocSma — the bar-over-bar change in the SMA, multiplied by 0.1 and added to 1.0. That produces a small multiplier that sits close to 1.0 but nudges upward when the SMA is rising and downward when the SMA is falling. This multiplier is then applied to the SMA itself (sma[i] * rocSma) to produce a momentum-adjusted average, rather than using the raw SMA.

The distance between the actual close and that momentum-adjusted average is then converted into a percentage of the current close: (close - smaMul) / close * 100. That percentage is the Glitch Index value plotted both as the histogram and the line. Two threshold inputs, inpLevel1 (default 2) and inpLevel2 (default 5), split the reading into five color zones — a neutral zone near zero, two “elevated” zones beyond Level 1, and two “extreme” zones beyond Level 2 — with matching horizontal level lines drawn on the sub-window at +Level2, +Level1, 0, -Level1, and -Level2 so you can see at a glance how far the current reading sits from those thresholds.

How to Read It

• Near zero — price is tracking close to its own momentum-adjusted average; there’s no meaningful stretch in either direction.
• Beyond +/-Level1 — price has moved a moderate amount away from its adjusted average in that direction, shown in the first pair of color zones.
• Beyond +/-Level2 — an extreme reading, shown in the outer pair of colors, flagging a move that has stretched well past what the recent average and its own momentum would predict.
• Histogram vs. line — both plots carry the exact same value and coloring; the histogram gives a quick visual sense of magnitude while the line makes it easier to track the reading’s slope over time.

Input Parameters (Actual Defaults From the Code)

• inpSmaPeriod = 30 — the period of the underlying SMA that the momentum adjustment and price-distance calculation are both built on.
• inpLevel1 = 2 — the inner threshold (in percent) marking a moderate reading; also drawn as a horizontal level line at +/-2.
• inpLevel2 = 5 — the outer threshold (in percent) marking an extreme reading; also drawn as a horizontal level line at +/-5.

Where This Fits in a Trading Plan

Because the reading is scaled directly to price rather than bounded like an RSI, Glitch Index tends to work best as a per-symbol overbought/oversold gauge that you recalibrate rather than a universal setting you apply unchanged across every chart. Traders looking for mean-reversion setups can watch for the histogram to reach the outer Level2 zone and then start easing back toward zero as an early sign the stretch is unwinding, while trend traders might instead use repeated moderate Level1 readings in one direction as confirmation that a trend has real momentum behind it rather than fading fast. Either use case benefits from watching the line’s slope, not just its absolute color zone, since a reading that is extreme but still climbing tells a different story than one that has already turned.

Honest Limitations

The rocSma multiplier only applies a fairly gentle 10% weighting to the SMA’s own rate of change, so on very fast-moving markets the “momentum adjustment” will lag noticeably behind the actual acceleration of price. Because the oscillator’s value is a percentage of the current close, the same absolute price move will produce different Glitch Index readings on instruments or pairs with very different price levels, so the default Level1/Level2 thresholds of 2 and 5 will need recalibrating per-symbol rather than used as universal constants. There is also no built-in signal line, divergence detection, or smoothing of the oscillator itself — what you see is the raw percentage reading, colored by threshold, with no additional filtering layer.