The technical indicator “Spread” is an extremely simple but at the same time useful spread indicator for all traders using the Metatrader 4 or 5 terminal in their trading.

Currently, most major forex brokers provide retail traders with ECN (Electronic Communication Network) trading accounts with a minimal spread over the main currency pairs. As a result of the transaction, retail traders are withdrawn directly to liquidity providers, which is an additional guarantee of high-quality and fastest execution of transactions.

The reverse side of this process is the fact that, when entering the market of market liquidity, traders have to take into account fluctuations in liquidity depending on the state of the market. As a rule, this affects primarily the spread, which begins to change depending on the situation in the foreign exchange market. Sometimes the spread can increase several times. For example, during the night hours, holidays, when the markets of some countries are closed or when important news is released. To control the size of the spread, I use a simple and at the same time reliable spread indicator – Spread. The Spread indicator is redrawn after each tick, which provides the current value of the active spread at any trading moment and allows you to open trades at the most appropriate time.



The indicator displays the current spread in the main chart window at the top left corner (A on the chart). You can change the font, the location of the indicator and adjust the value of the spread in pips or points. It is possible to enable the display of a text label that will show the spread value next to the current price line (B on the chart). The indicator is available for both MT4 and MT5.

Parameters of the Spread indicator:

UseCustomPipSize (default = false) – if true, the size of the item will be taken based on the input parameter DecimalPlaces, otherwise the default broker size of the item will be used.
DecimalPlaces (default = 0) – the number of characters in the decimal point. For example, “4”, if the item should look like “0.0001”. If you set it to 0, you tell the indicator that one item looks like “1” – with a zero of digits after the decimal point. Thus, a quotation of the form 1201.4 / 1202.6 will show a spread equal to 1.2 points. If you set DecimalPlaces to 1, then this will mean that your item looks like “0,1” – with one digit after the decimal point. And this means that the same quote contains a spread of 12 points. If you think that the correct item should look like “0.01”, you can set the DecimalPlaces parameter to 2 and the spread of the same quotation will be 120. If you want to set your own size of the item via the DecimalPlaces parameter, the UseCustomPipSize parameter must be set to true. When the UseCustomPipSize parameter is set to false, the indicator uses the default size of the item. 
AlertIfSpreadAbove (default = 0) – if greater than 0, then the sound signal will sound when the spread exceeds the specified value.
DrawLabel (default = false) – if true, a small text label with the value of the current spread will be displayed near the offer price line (Bid).
font_color (default = Red) – the color of the spread indicator.
font_size (default = 14) – the size of the spread indicator.
font_face (default = “Arial”) – the font of the spread indicator.
corner (default = ANCHOR_LEFT_UPPER) – the location of the indicator on the graph.
spread_distance_x (default = 10) – the horizontal distance from the corner to the indicator.
spread_distance_y (default = 130) – the vertical distance from the corner to the indicator.
DrawTextAsBackground (default = false) – if true, the text with the spread value is displayed as a background. It can be useful when you want the indicator not to close the graph.
label_font_color (default = Red) – the color of the text label with the spread.
label_font_size (default = 13) – the size of the text label with the spread.
label_font_face (default = “Courier”) – the font of the text label with the spread.

As you can see, this indicator has the most possible settings to meet any trader’s wishes. You can download it from the link – Spread Indicator zip.