What is the difference between the Gator and the Alligator?

None, in terms of information. The Gator's upper histogram is the distance between the Alligator's Jaw and Teeth, and its lower histogram is the distance between the Teeth and Lips with a minus sign. Both are computed from the same three smoothed averages of median price. What changes is what is easy to see: three curves on a price chart make convergence a judgement call, while two histograms make it a number that either grew or did not. Use the Gator when you want that judgement mechanised — but do not treat the two agreeing as independent confirmation.

Why is the lower histogram negative?

Because MT5 draws it top-down so that the pair looks like a mouth. MetaTrader's own help puts it directly: the lower histogram is the absolute difference between the red and green lines, 'but with the minus sign, as the histogram chart is drawn top-down'. The practical consequence is that the two halves widen in opposite numerical directions — the upper value goes up and the lower value goes down — so a rule that tests both with the same comparison operator is wrong for one of them.

Can an EA read the bar colours?

The colours exist as buffers — the MQL5 reference names buffer 1 as the upper histogram's colour index and buffer 3 as the lower one's. The Builder's node cannot select them: its Line property offers Upper and Lower, which are buffers 0 and 2. So a generated EA has to rebuild the colour, which is straightforward because the rule behind it is just 'is this bar bigger than the last one'. The template does that with two nodes per histogram.

Can I build a Gator EA without coding?

Yes. The Gator Mouth Opening template reads the upper histogram at the current bar and the previous one, does the same for the lower histogram, and requires the upper to have risen and the lower to have fallen — both halves growing. Direction comes from an Alligator node pair comparing Lips against Jaw. All six periods and shifts are EA inputs, along with the stop distances.

How should I validate settings before going live?

Backtest on quality tick data, then run on a demo account before risking money. Two things deserve particular attention here. First, the six periods appear four times over in the generated inputs — change one copy and the comparison silently compares two different indicators, so check that a parameter sweep moves them together or not at all. Second, requiring both halves to grow is a narrow filter, so read the trade count before the profit.

Gator Oscillator for MT5 traders

What the Gator Oscillator tells you

The Alligator is three smoothed averages of median price, each pushed forward by a few bars. Reading it means judging by eye whether the three curves are converging or spreading. The Gator does that judging arithmetically: the upper histogram is the gap between the slowest two lines and the lower histogram is the gap between the fastest two, drawn downwards so the pair reads like a mouth. When both halves are growing the lines are spreading — Bill Williams' 'the Alligator is eating'. When both are shrinking they are converging and the market is going nowhere. There is no new input here: every value comes from the same three averages the Alligator already draws.

Both halves growing: the lines are spreading — a trend is under way
Both halves shrinking: the lines are converging — stand aside
One growing, one shrinking: the phase is changing, and which one is growing says which end

1 Take the Alligator's Jaw (13), Teeth (8) and Lips (5), each shifted forward
2 Upper = |Jaw − Teeth|
3 Lower = −|Teeth − Lips|, drawn downwards

عرض الصيغة وتفاصيل الحساب

The Gator Oscillator is the Alligator, re-expressed as two distances:

upper = |Jaw − Teeth|
lower = −|Teeth − Lips|

Jaw, Teeth and Lips are smoothed moving averages of median price over 13, 8 and 5 bars, each pushed forward by 8, 5 and 3. Nothing else enters the calculation. The Gator is therefore not a second indicator that happens to agree with the Alligator — it is the Alligator, with the eyeballing done arithmetically.

In MQL5 the call is iGator(symbol, period, jaw_period, jaw_shift, teeth_period, teeth_shift, lips_period, lips_shift, ma_method, applied_price) — ten arguments, more than any other indicator the Builder exposes. Six of them become EA inputs; the MA method and the applied price are written into the generated code as literals, so they are chosen when you generate rather than adjusted afterwards.

Two facts about the output matter more than the formula.

There are four buffers, not two. The reference states the layout without ambiguity: 0 - UPPER_HISTOGRAM, 1 - color buffer of the upper histogram, 2 - LOWER_HISTOGRAM, 3 - color buffer of the lower histogram. The lower histogram is at index 2. Reading it at index 1 returns a colour index — a small integer — and nothing will complain; the rule will simply compare a colour number against a price difference forever. The Builder’s node maps its Line property to 0 and 2 for exactly this reason, and its codegen carries a comment saying so.

The lower half is negative. MetaTrader’s help is explicit that the lower histogram carries a minus sign “as the histogram chart is drawn top-down”. So the two halves grow in opposite numerical directions. “Both histograms are growing” — the whole point of the indicator — is upper > upper[1] and lower < lower[1]. Write both with > and you have asked for a mouth that is opening at the top and closing at the bottom, which is a real state and not the one you meant.

The colours MT5 paints encode exactly that growth, and unlike the Awesome and Accelerator oscillators the colours here are genuinely published buffers rather than draw-time decoration. The Builder still cannot reach them — the node selects Upper or Lower and nothing else — so the template reconstructs the rule from values. That reconstruction is exact, but it needs two reads per histogram, which is why a rule this simple ends up as four indicator nodes.

الإشارات

الإشارات المتميزة والقابلة للاختبار التي يوفرها Gator — والنظام الملائم لكل منها.

Both Halves Growing

جاهز في المنشئ

الشرط: The upper histogram is larger than on the previous bar and the lower one is more negative
أفضل نظام: Trending
الاستخدام النموذجي: The template's condition — act only while the mouth is opening

Both Halves Shrinking

جاهز في المنشئ

الشرط: The upper histogram falls and the lower one rises toward zero
أفضل نظام: Range
الاستخدام النموذجي: A stand-aside filter for entries generated elsewhere

One Side Turning

جاهز في المنشئ

الشرط: The fast gap starts widening while the slow gap is still shrinking
أفضل نظام: Trend start
الاستخدام النموذجي: An earlier and noisier version of the same reading

Sustained Growth Without Price

منطق متقدم

الشرط: Both halves grow while price makes no new extreme
أفضل نظام: Trend exhaustion
الاستخدام النموذجي: A discretionary warning that the spread is coming from the averages catching up, not from new movement

تنفيذ MT5

ما يحسبه ويرسمه ميتاتريدر 5 فعليًا — وهو المرجع الذي كُتبت وفقه كل قاعدة في هذه الصفحة.

المخازن

الفهرس	المخزن	طريقة الرسم في MT5	ما يحتويه
0	UPPER_HISTOGRAM	Histogram	The absolute difference between the Jaw and the Teeth. Always positive, drawn above zero.
1	COLOR_INDEX	Colour index	Which colour the upper histogram's bar takes — green when the bar is larger than the one before it, red when smaller. The MQL5 reference names this buffer explicitly. The Builder's node cannot select it; its Line property offers Upper and Lower only.
2	LOWER_HISTOGRAM	Histogram	The absolute difference between the Teeth and the Lips, with a minus sign, so it is drawn top-down below zero. Reading this buffer at index 1 instead of index 2 returns the upper histogram's colour index as if it were a price — the Builder's codegen carries a comment about exactly this.
3	COLOR_INDEX	Colour index	The lower histogram's colour buffer. Also unreachable from the node.

ملاحظات المنصة

دالة MQL5

iGator

السعر المطبَّق

في المنشئ

iGator takes ten arguments — symbol, timeframe, three period/shift pairs, an MA method and an applied price — which is the most of any indicator node in the Builder. The node exposes all of them, but only the six period and shift values become EA inputs; the MA method and the applied price are written into the generated code as literals (SMMA and median price by default), so they are set when the EA is generated and cannot be changed afterwards in MT5's inputs dialog.

ملاحظات التنفيذ

Buffer 0 is the upper histogram and buffer 2 is the lower one — 1 and 3 are colour indices. The Builder's codegen maps the node's Line property accordingly and carries a comment saying so, because reading Lower at index 1 would return a colour number and use it as a price.
The lower histogram is negative. 'Growing' therefore means the upper value rising and the lower value falling, and the template's two Compare nodes use opposite operators for that reason. Writing both with the same operator produces a rule that fires when the mouth is half open and half closed.
The template places four Gator nodes: Upper and Lower, each at shift 0 and shift 1. Four nodes with identical arguments resolve to one MT5 handle, so the indicator is computed once — but each node publishes its own six period and shift inputs, which means the generated EA has twenty-four Gator inputs that must be kept identical for the comparisons to mean anything. That is the price of the colour buffers being unreachable.
The MA method and the applied price reach the generated code as literals — (ENUM_MA_METHOD)2 and (ENUM_APPLIED_PRICE)4 for SMMA and median. They are set at generation time. Six of the ten arguments become inputs; two are literals and two are the symbol and timeframe.
Divergence between the histograms and price needs swing detection on two series at once, which the node palette does not express; that signal requires custom MQL5.

يعمل بشكل أفضل / استخدم بحذر

لا يوجد مؤشر ذو ميزة شاملة. إليك أين يساعد Gator — وأين يضلل.

يعمل بشكل أفضل

Confirming that a breakout has the three averages spreading behind it
Filtering out the converged stretches where a trend rule will be whipsawed
Higher timeframes, where the SMMA lag is a feature rather than a delay
Alongside the Alligator itself, which supplies the direction the Gator omits

استخدم بحذر

As a direction source — both halves grow the same way in an up move and a down move
Any fixed threshold on the height; it carries the instrument's price units
Reading the lower half with the same comparison as the upper — it is negative, so growth is downwards
Assuming it adds information to the Alligator; it is the same three averages restated

بناء استراتيجية Gator

اربط الإشارة بقواعد الدخول والخروج، ثم صدّر EA MT5 قابلاً للترجمة — بدون كود.

Gator Upper at the current bar and the previous one
Gator Lower at the same two bars
Upper higher than before AND Lower lower than before → the mouth is opening
Alligator Lips against Jaw supplies the direction
Opening AND Lips above Jaw → Open Buy · SL 50 / TP 150; the mirrored pair → Open Sell

دمج Gator مع مؤشرات أخرى

نادراً ما يقف مؤشر واحد وحده. هذه التوليفات تغطي النقاط العمياء لـ Gator.

Gator + Alligator

Both Gator halves growing
Lips above Jaw
Buy

السبب: The pairing the template already uses, and the only one that is strictly necessary. The Gator says the lines are spreading; the Alligator says which way they are pointing. The two are computed from the same three averages, so this is not two opinions — it is one indicator read twice, once for magnitude and once for order
أفضل نظام: Trending

بناء هذه الاستراتيجية →

Gator + Awesome Oscillator

Both Gator halves growing
AO above zero
Buy

السبب: Bill Williams' own sequencing: the Gator tells you the market has woken up and AO tells you which side the momentum is on. Because AO is built from a different pair of windows (5 and 34) it is not a restatement of the Alligator, which the Gator is — so it adds an opinion rather than a second view of the same one
أفضل نظام: Trending

No single-flow template pairs them. Start from Gator Mouth Opening and swap the Lips-versus-Jaw pair for an AO node with a Compare against a Constant of 0.

افتح المنشئ →

Gator + ADX

Both Gator halves growing
ADX above 25
Buy

السبب: Two answers to the same question from different arithmetic. The Gator reads the spread of three smoothed averages; ADX reads directional movement against range. Requiring both removes the case where the averages are spreading only because a long quiet stretch let the slow one catch up
أفضل نظام: Trending

No single-flow template combines them. Start from Gator Mouth Opening and add an ADX node with a Compare at 25 into the existing AND tree — the same filter the Parabolic SAR template uses.

افتح المنشئ →

المعاملات

قيم أولية للتحقق على زوجك الخاص وإطارك الزمني — ليست إعدادات مضمونة.

المعامل	الافتراضي	نطاق الاختبار المقترح	ما يفعله
Jaw period / shift	13 / 8	1–999 / 0–100	The slowest of the three averages and how far forward it is pushed. It sets the top of the upper histogram: a longer Jaw sits further from the Teeth, so the upper half is taller and slower to change.
Teeth period / shift	8 / 5	1–999 / 0–100	The middle average, and the only one that appears in both histograms — the upper measures it against the Jaw, the lower against the Lips. Changing it moves both halves at once, which is why the two are not independent readings.
Lips period / shift	5 / 3	1–999 / 0–100	The fastest average. It only affects the lower histogram, which is therefore the half that reacts first — the lower half usually starts growing before the upper one does.
MA method	SMMA	SMA, EMA, SMMA, LWMA	How the three averages are smoothed. It is a real argument to iGator and the node exposes it, but the Builder writes the chosen value into the generated code as a literal rather than as an EA input — so it is fixed when you generate, not adjustable in MT5 afterwards. Bill Williams specified smoothed averages and that is the default.
Applied price	Median	Close, Open, High, Low, Median, Typical, Weighted	Which price the averages are taken of. Also a real argument, also written as a literal. Median price — (high + low) / 2 — is Bill Williams' choice and the node's default.
Line	Upper	Upper or Lower	Which histogram the node reads. This selects the buffer index, and it is the setting to be careful with: Upper is buffer 0 and Lower is buffer 2, because buffers 1 and 3 hold colour indices.

الإعدادات المسبقة الأولية

Standard 13 / 8 / 5 Bill Williams' own numbers, MT5's defaults, and what the template uses

Slower 21 / 13 / 8 Fewer openings, each covering a longer stretch

أمثلة السوق

أين يعمل Gator، وأين يفشل، وكيف يغير الفلتر النتيجة.

يعمل

The mouth opening into a trend

After a converged stretch both histograms start growing on the same bar and the Lips are above the Jaw. The entry fires and the fixed target is reached while the halves are still expanding.

يفشل

One bar of growth inside a range

A single wider bar nudges both gaps up for one bar in an otherwise converged market. Both conditions are technically met and the averages re-converge two bars later.

مُصفّى

Half open, half closed

The fast gap widens while the slow one is still shrinking — the usual look of a phase change that has not finished. The template's AND declines it, which is the difference between the mouth opening and the Lips simply running ahead.

المؤشرات ذات الصلة

Alligator عرض الدليل →

Awesome Oscillator عرض الدليل →

BW MFI عرض الدليل →

FAQ

What is the difference between the Gator and the Alligator?: None, in terms of information. The Gator's upper histogram is the distance between the Alligator's Jaw and Teeth, and its lower histogram is the distance between the Teeth and Lips with a minus sign. Both are computed from the same three smoothed averages of median price. What changes is what is easy to see: three curves on a price chart make convergence a judgement call, while two histograms make it a number that either grew or did not. Use the Gator when you want that judgement mechanised — but do not treat the two agreeing as independent confirmation.
Why is the lower histogram negative?: Because MT5 draws it top-down so that the pair looks like a mouth. MetaTrader's own help puts it directly: the lower histogram is the absolute difference between the red and green lines, 'but with the minus sign, as the histogram chart is drawn top-down'. The practical consequence is that the two halves widen in opposite numerical directions — the upper value goes up and the lower value goes down — so a rule that tests both with the same comparison operator is wrong for one of them.
Can an EA read the bar colours?: The colours exist as buffers — the MQL5 reference names buffer 1 as the upper histogram's colour index and buffer 3 as the lower one's. The Builder's node cannot select them: its Line property offers Upper and Lower, which are buffers 0 and 2. So a generated EA has to rebuild the colour, which is straightforward because the rule behind it is just 'is this bar bigger than the last one'. The template does that with two nodes per histogram.
What settings should I use?: 13 / 8 / 5 with shifts of 8 / 5 / 3, smoothed averages and median price — Bill Williams' own numbers and MT5's defaults. Note that only the six period and shift values become EA inputs; the MA method and the applied price are baked into the generated code, so if you want something other than SMMA and median you must set it on the node before generating.
Can I build a Gator EA without coding?: Yes. The Gator Mouth Opening template reads the upper histogram at the current bar and the previous one, does the same for the lower histogram, and requires the upper to have risen and the lower to have fallen — both halves growing. Direction comes from an Alligator node pair comparing Lips against Jaw. All six periods and shifts are EA inputs, along with the stop distances.
How should I validate settings before going live?: Backtest on quality tick data, then run on a demo account before risking money. Two things deserve particular attention here. First, the six periods appear four times over in the generated inputs — change one copy and the comparison silently compares two different indicators, so check that a parameter sweep moves them together or not at all. Second, requiring both halves to grow is a narrow filter, so read the trade count before the profit.

Glossary

المصطلحات الرئيسية

الاختبار الخلفي (باك تست)الإفراط في التحسين المتوسط المتحرك الأسي