APEX Pro — how to use it

Pro acts on the range. It measures the opening hour of a session, then watches for a decisive close beyond it — checking the breakout candle against real candlestick patterns rather than accepting any close, and drawing your stop and three targets from the range itself.

Quick start

1. Open a 5-minute chart. APEX detects sessions on the 5-minute timeframe. Session timing and the signal window are calibrated for 5M.
2. Set your timezone under Timezone → Display Timezone.
3. Set Pip Size for your instrument. 0.0001 for most forex, 0.01 for JPY pairs. This drives your stop distance, so it matters.
4. Choose your sessions. European, London and NY are on by default; Asia / Australia is off.
5. Create the alert. Right-click → Add alert → Condition: APEX Pro → Any alert() function call.

How a signal forms

Every condition below must be true. Any one of them failing means no signal.

• The session has ended. Signals never fire inside the session hour — the range must lock first.
• Same trading day. Yesterday's range cannot produce today's signal.
• Within the signal window — 60 bars after the session closes, about five hours on 5M. After that the setup expires.
• The candle closes beyond the range — above the high for a long, below the low for a short. A wick through the level is not enough.
• The close agrees with the direction — a long needs a bullish candle, a short a bearish one.
• At least one enabled pattern matches. This is the quality filter that separates a breakout from a drift.

The five patterns

Patterns are OR logic — a signal fires if the breakout candle matches any one you have enabled. More patterns means more signals; fewer means stricter, rarer ones. Engulfing Body is the only one on by default.

Tuning them

Stop loss and targets

APEX places risk from the session range itself, not from a guessed pip count.

• Stop sits just beyond the opposite side of the range — below the range low on a long, above the range high on a short — offset by your SL Buffer.
• TP1, TP2, TP3 are 1:1, 2:1 and 3:1 multiples of that stop distance. Each can be hidden independently.
• Lines draw on today's signals only, keeping historical charts readable. Older signals still show their labels.

Sessions and daylight saving

Clock changes do not land on the same date in every region. If a session box looks an hour out, correct it with the start-hour inputs under Timezone — for example, set NY Open start hour to 14 when US clocks shift ahead of the UK.

Troubleshooting

No signals appearing

Check the obvious first: are you on a 5-minute chart, is the session enabled, and has the session hour finished? Signals only fire after the range locks, and only for 60 bars afterwards. If it is still quiet, you may be filtering too hard — One Signal Per Session Per Day is on by default, so a session that already fired stays quiet until tomorrow.

Too many signals

Enable fewer patterns, or raise Min Body Size so only decisive candles qualify. Turning off sessions you do not trade will quieten the chart considerably.

Alert fired but no label on the chart

Repaint is on and the candle closed without confirming. This is expected behaviour — see the Repaint and timing guide.