The Boy Plunger | Anonycryptous

The Boy Plunger | Anonycryptous
Description & user manual

Why is this indicator different?
Most breakout indicators do one thing: they draw a line and fire a signal when price crosses it. They do not ask whether the move is real. They do not ask whether the volume confirms it. They do not ask whether the broader trend supports it. They just fire.

The Boy Plunger is built on a different philosophy. It does not look for crossings. It looks for proof.
Every signal in this indicator requires the market to pass through a series of gates before anything fires. A key structural level must be present. Price must approach it with observable intent. Volume must confirm participation. The body of the breakout candle must show conviction. The ribbon must be aligned with the move. Only when all required conditions are satisfied does a signal appear.
This is confirmation trading in its strictest form. It produces fewer signals than most indicators. That is not a weakness. That is the point.

Most indicators on TradingView that claim to be based on Livermore's method are either a single pivot high/low scanner or a basic breakout line. None of them implement the full confirmation philosophy — the waiting zone, the volume proof, the structural gate, the failed breakout detection. This indicator does all of that in a single tool, across all markets and timeframes, with a modular seven-preset system that lets you trade pure Livermore methodology or adapt it to modern intraday conditions.

A tribute to Jesse Lauriston Livermore (1877-1940)
He started with five dollars and a notebook. No connections, no capital, no safety net — just the ability to read price and the discipline to wait. By 1929 he had turned that into an estimated one hundred million dollars, shorting the crash while the rest of the world burned.

He defined what it means to trade with conviction. Wait for the decisive point. Watch how the market behaves around key levels. Demand proof before committing. Exit without hesitation when the market proves you wrong.
He called these moments pivot points — not a formula, but a philosophy. The market reveals its hand when it breaks away from structure with strength and volume. Everything before that is noise.
But Livermore also lost it all. Four times. He broke his own rules, overtraded, let emotion overrule his system. The man who made one hundred million dollars was declared bankrupt in 1934. On November 28, 1940, he took his own life in a New York hotel. His farewell note read: "My life has been a failure."

It wasn't. He gave traders a language to describe what markets do. A century later, his observations are still the foundation of how serious traders think about price.

This indicator is built on his principles:
- structure defines the battlefield
- volume confirms the move
- trend determines the direction
- proof before entry, always
What you do with it is your decision.

1. Overview
The Boy Plunger is a multi-engine confluence indicator built for traders who want to trade with structure, confirmation, and discipline. It works on all markets and timeframes — equities, crypto, futures, forex, indices. Nothing is hardcoded to a specific instrument.

The indicator contains seven engines that work together:
- Silk ribbon — multi-strand MA system for macro trend
- Htf levels — higher timeframe pivot structure as key levels
- Volume engine — spike detection with delta confirmation
- Signal gate — preset-based multi-condition filter
- Fvg engine — fair value gap detection for entry refinement
- Htf reversal radar — multi-timeframe warning system
- Trade block — locked entry, stop, and take profit management
All seven engines are visible simultaneously on the main chart. The dashboard gives you a real-time read of every active condition. The trade block locks the moment a signal fires and does not move until the trade is resolved.

2. The waiting zone system
This is the core visual innovation of the indicator. Rather than coloring elements only when a signal fires, every component communicates the current stage of a developing setup:

Scanning — price is away from any key level. The ribbon is grey and dimmed. No setup is developing.

Watching — price has entered the proximity zone around a key htf level (within a configurable ATR distance). The level turns gold. The waiting zone is active. This is the "I am watching" state that Livermore described — the market is approaching the decisive point but has not proven anything yet.

Confirmed — price breaks the level with volume spike and body conviction. Everything fires to full color. The signal candle is highlighted. If the preset requires it, the signal fires.

This three-state system means the chart is always telling you something — not just when a signal happens, but what stage of development you are in. Scanning means relax. Watching means pay attention. Confirmed means decide.

3. Presets
The indicator has seven presets that define which gates are required for a signal to fire. You change the preset in the settings under the preset group.

Livermore
The purest implementation of his method. No EMA gate — he did not use EMAs. Level proximity required. Volume spike required. Body conviction required. This preset is designed for traders who want to apply his original philosophy as closely as possible to modern markets. The recommended cooldown is 10 bars based on testing across multiple instruments — long enough to avoid noise, short enough to catch valid retests of confirmed levels. Best results observed on 15m and above.

Boy plunger
The intraday adaptation. Macro trend gate added via the ribbon (HMA 8/21 by default). Level required. Volume required. Body required. Cooldown shorter by default. Built for scalp-oriented traders who want Livermore's structure logic on faster timeframes. The HMA is used instead of EMA because of its faster response and cleaner directional read on lower timeframes.

Ribbon
Uses the MA cross as the primary gate. The level acts as a structural filter rather than a requirement. Best for trend-following traders who want ribbon-confirmed entries near key structure.

Sensitive
Level and volume spike only. No trend gate, no body filter. Produces more signals. Use when you want maximum opportunity detection and prefer to filter visually yourself.

Balanced
Trend, level, and volume. The middle ground between sensitivity and selectivity. Recommended starting point if you are new to the indicator.

Fvg entry
Balanced gates plus a requirement that price is inside an active fair value gap at signal time. This produces the tightest entries and smallest stop distances. Note: fair value gaps are not part of Livermore's original methodology. This preset is for modern traders who combine his structural philosophy with imbalance-based entry timing.

Custom
All engine gates become individual toggles. You build your own preset. Every toggle has a tooltip explaining its function and its relationship to Livermore's original method.

4. The silk ribbon
The ribbon consists of seven MA strands between your fast and slow periods, with gradient fills between them. The MA type applies to all strands simultaneously.
Available types: EMA, HMA, DEMA, TEMA, ZLEMA.
HMA is recommended for intraday scalping. EMA is more stable for swing setups. DEMA and TEMA reduce lag further but can be noisy on short timeframes. ZLEMA minimizes lag while maintaining smoothness.

The ribbon colors purely based on trend direction:
- Green when fast strand is above slow strand (bull)
- Red when fast strand is below slow strand (bear)
- Grey when flat

The color intensity and fill transparency are controlled by a single transparency slider. The fast strand width is separately configurable.
Cross signals (tiny circles) fire when the fast and slow strands cross. These are early warnings of potential trend change, not entry signals by themselves.

5. Htf levels
The indicator pulls pivot highs and lows from a higher timeframe of your choice using request.security. This means the levels you see on your 1m or 5m chart are actual structural levels from the 4h or daily chart — not redrawn approximations.
You can set a separate count for resistance levels and support levels. The nearest-only toggle reduces this to one resistance and one support — the most relevant levels on each side of price.

Each level has three visual states that match the waiting zone system described above. Scanning levels are dimmed. Watching levels turn gold. Confirmed breakout levels turn green or red.
An optional current timeframe overlay adds the pivots from your active chart at high transparency. This gives structural context without cluttering the main htf levels.
The failed breakout marker fires when price confirms a level, then returns through it within a configurable number of bars. This is the direct implementation of Livermore's rule: if the market moves back against you after a breakout, exit quickly with a small loss.

6. Volume engine
The volume engine has two components:
Spike detection: volume must exceed the configurable-period SMA multiplied by the spike multiplier. Default is 1.5x — meaning volume must be at least fifty percent above average to qualify.

Body conviction: the candle body must represent at least a configurable percentage of the total candle range. Default is 55%. This filters out doji candles and wick-heavy indecision candles from being counted as confirmed breakouts.

The volume halo appears on the chart for every spike bar. Its height scales with the volume ratio — a 3x spike produces a taller halo than a 1.5x spike. The halo color uses delta logic:
- Green for bull body with conviction (buying commitment)
- Red for bear body with conviction (selling commitment)
- Gold for high-volume doji or mixed candle (institutional activity, unclear direction)

The ratio text inside the halo shows the exact multiple (2.1x, 3.4x, etc.). Its opacity scales with strength — a weak spike shows faint text, a strong spike shows full text. This means glancing at the halo tells you both the direction and magnitude of institutional participation at that bar.

7. Htf ghost candles
The ghost candle engine projects the last N closed higher timeframe candles to the right of your chart, plus the current live (unfinished) htf candle. This gives you the htf price structure in candle form without switching timeframes.
The ghost candle timeframe is independent from the htf level timeframe. You can show 4H structural levels while projecting 1H ghost candles, or combine them however fits your workflow.
Closed candles are drawn left to right, oldest to newest. Each candle consists of a body box and a wick line. Bull candles are green, bear candles are red. No time labels appear on any candle — pure price structure only.
The live candle (the current unfinished htf bar) is drawn rightmost in a gold tint to distinguish it from closed candles. As the htf bar develops, this candle updates in real time.
Optional OHLC labels show the high, low, and close price to the right of each candle. The close label uses the candle direction color (green or red). High and low labels are grey.

Configurable settings:
- Ghost candle timeframe (independent from htf level TF)
- Number of closed candles to show (1-8)
- Right offset from last bar
- Candle width in bars
- Gap between candles
- OHLC labels on/off
- Bull, bear, wick, and live candle colors

8. Fair value gaps
Fair value gaps are three-bar imbalances where the middle candle leaves a gap between the high of the first candle and the low of the third candle (for bullish gaps) or the reverse. They represent areas where price moved too fast to fill orders on both sides.
In this indicator, fvgs are disabled by default in all presets except fvg entry. This is intentional — they are not part of Livermore's method and were not available to him. They are provided as an optional tool for traders who use modern imbalance concepts alongside structural analysis.
When enabled, fvgs show partial mitigation as price fills them progressively. Fully mitigated gaps are either removed or shown in a dimmed grey depending on your settings. The max visible fvg count prevents the chart from becoming cluttered on instruments with frequent gaps.

9. Htf reversal radar
The reversal radar monitors three configurable higher timeframes simultaneously for potential reversal conditions. A warning fires when two or more timeframes show:
- An EMA cross in the opposite direction to the current trend, or
- An RSI extreme exit (above 70 crossing back down, or below 30 crossing back up)
The warning appears as a small diamond plotshape and is reflected in the dashboard. It does not block signals — it is contextual information that something may be changing on higher timeframes while you are looking at a lower timeframe setup.

10. Rsi divergence
The divergence engine compares price pivot highs/lows to RSI pivot highs/lows. Bullish divergence fires when price makes a lower low but RSI makes a higher low. Bearish divergence fires when price makes a higher high but RSI makes a lower high.
Lines are drawn connecting the pivots that form the divergence. A small "div" text label appears at the endpoint. Line width and colors are separately configurable.
Divergence does not gate signals in any preset. It is contextual information — a potential warning that momentum is weakening even as price extends.

11. Signal quality filters
Three additional filters apply across all presets:
Cooldown: a minimum number of bars must pass between signals. This prevents multiple signals from firing on the same setup as it develops. Recommended: 10 bars as a starting point. Adjust based on your timeframe and how often valid setups appear. The dashboard shows either "ready" or the number of bars remaining.
Max ATR distance: if price is too far extended from the ribbon fast strand, the signal is blocked. This prevents entries on moves that are already largely done. Default is 3 ATR from the ribbon.
Pullback gate: an optional filter that requires price to return toward the ribbon after a breakout before confirming an entry. This is the cleanest implementation of Livermore's preferred entry timing — let the level break, let the market prove it wants to go, then enter on the retest rather than the initial breakout. Fewer signals, better risk to reward.

12. Trade block
The trade block appears only when a trade is active. It locks the moment a signal fires and does not move until the trade closes.

Components:
- Entry line with label showing price and direction
- Stop line (ATR, swing high/low, or hybrid of the two)
- Three take profit lines at configurable R multiples
- Risk zone box between entry and stop
- Reward boxes between entry and each TP
- Phase label above TP3 showing preset and direction
- R:R ratio and win rate displayed in the reward zone
TP lines dim when not yet reached and become fully saturated when hit. This gives you an immediate visual read of where you are in the trade without looking at the dashboard.

When the trade closes, a labeled exit appears at the exit candle:
- tp1, tp2, tp3 in green with dark text
- sl in red with dark text
- trail in gold with dark text
These labels remain on the chart after the trade closes so you can review the history.

Stop loss modes:
- ATR: stop at entry plus or minus ATR multiplied by a configurable value
- Swing: stop at the recent swing high or low
- Hybrid: the wider of the two — provides the most structure-aware placement

Trail stop activates after TP1 is hit. After TP1, the stop moves to breakeven. After TP2, the stop trails behind the ribbon fast strand with a configurable buffer.

13. Dashboard reference
The dashboard updates every bar at the latest bar. All values are live.

Htf — the timeframe driving the structural levels
Macro trend — ribbon direction (bull / bear)
Ribbon — active MA type
Active level — nearest htf pivot level to current price
Level state — scanning / watching / confirmed up / confirmed down
Volume ratio — current bar volume relative to the SMA (e.g. 1.8x avg or spike 2.3x)
Body ratio — current candle body as percentage of total range
Fvg active — count of active unmitigated bull and bear fvgs
Divergence — bull div or bear div if active, otherwise --
Htf radar — number of higher timeframes showing reversal conditions
Signal gate — active preset name
Last signal — most recent signal direction and whether trade is active
Tp progress — three dots showing current trade's TP hit status (o unlit, ^ hit)
Tp1 rate — percentage of total trades that reached TP1
Tp2 rate — percentage of total trades that reached TP2
Tp3 rate — percentage of total trades that reached TP3
Failed breakouts — cumulative count of failed breakout signals
Long win rate — TP1 hit rate on long signals only
Short win rate — TP1 hit rate on short signals only
Cooldown — bars remaining before next signal is allowed, or "ready"

14. Settings overview
Preset group
- Signal gate preset (7 options)
- Custom gate toggles (active only in custom preset)
- Signal cooldown on/off and bar count
- Pullback gate on/off and window
- Max ATR distance on/off and multiplier

Silk ribbon group
- Show ribbon on/off
- MA type
- Fast and slow periods
- Ribbon transparency slider
- Fast strand width
- Show cross signals on/off
- Bull and bear cross colors

Htf levels group
- Htf timeframe
- Pivot length
- Max resistance levels shown (1-8)
- Max support levels shown (1-8)
- Nearest only toggle
- Level line width
- Resistance, support, watching, and confirmed colors
- Show current TF levels on/off
- Current TF pivot length
- Watching zone ATR distance
- Failed breakout lookback bars

Volume engine group
- Show volume halo on/off
- Volume SMA length
- Spike multiplier
- Min body ratio
- Halo height ATR multiplier

Htf ghost candles group
- Show ghost candles on/off
- Ghost candle timeframe
- Number of candles to show
- Right offset, width, and gap between candles
- Show OHLC labels on/off
- Bull, bear, wick, and live candle colors

Fvg group
- Show fvgs on/off (off by default except in fvg entry preset)
- Max visible fvg count
- Min gap size in ATR
- Extend to right on/off
- Keep mitigated gaps on/off
- Bull, bear, and mitigated colors

Htf reversal radar group
- Enable radar on/off
- Three radar timeframes

Divergence group
- Show divergence on/off
- Pivot left and right lookback
- Max bars between pivots
- Show divergence lines on/off
- Line width
- Bull and bear divergence colors

Trade block group
- Show trade block on/off
- Show exit labels on/off
- Exit label colors (TP, SL, trail)
- SL source (ATR, swing, hybrid)
- ATR stop multiplier
- Swing lookback
- TP1, TP2, TP3 R multiples
- Trail stop on/off
- Trail buffer ATR multiplier
- Project bars (width of the trade block)

Dashboard group
- Show dashboard on/off
- Position (four corners)
- Size (tiny, small, normal)

15. How to use — beginners
If you are new to technical analysis and confluence-based trading, start here.
Step 1: add the indicator and set the preset to "balanced."

Step 2: set your htf timeframe to something higher than the chart you are watching. If you are on a 5m chart, use 1H. If you are on a 15m chart, use 4H.

Step 3: watch the dashboard. When level state changes from "scanning" to "watching," that means price is approaching a key level. This is your cue to pay close attention.

Step 4: wait. Do not act on "watching." Wait for volume to confirm. Wait for the ribbon to be aligned. Wait for the body ratio to show a conviction candle. When the level state changes to "confirmed," that is when the indicator agrees a signal may be valid.

Step 5: if a triangle signal appears below or above a candle, that means all preset gates passed simultaneously. The trade block will lock your entry, stop, and targets automatically.

Step 6: manage the trade with the trade block. Watch the TP progress dots in the dashboard. When dots light up, TPs are being hit.

Step 7: after the trade closes, look at the exit label on the chart. This tells you how the trade resolved — tp1, tp2, tp3, sl, or trail.

Step 8: over time, watch the dashboard metrics. TP1 rate above 60% on your chosen preset and timeframe is a solid foundation. If it is below 50%, try adjusting the cooldown, the volume multiplier, or the htf level pivot length.

16. How to use — experienced traders
For traders who understand confluence and want to customize the indicator for their own methodology:

The custom preset gives you individual control over every gate. Use this if you have a specific condition combination that the named presets do not cover.

The pullback gate is the highest-value optional filter in the indicator. Enable it if you find that your signals are entering too early on breakout candles and getting caught in the initial wick. It waits for price to retrace toward the ribbon before confirming entry.

The ribbon period settings matter significantly on lower timeframes. For 1m and 5m, test HMA 8/21. For 15m, HMA 13/34 or EMA 21/55. For 1H and above, EMA 21/89 gives cleaner swing context without too much noise.

The volume spike multiplier should be adjusted by instrument. Crypto and oil tend to have more frequent spikes than equity index futures. Start at 1.5x and move up to 2.0x if you are getting too many false spikes.

The failed breakout lookback (default 3 bars) can be extended to 5-8 bars on higher timeframes where reactions take longer to develop.

For multi-timeframe setups, use the htf reversal radar with timeframes one step above your normal analysis chain. If you trade on 15m, set the radar to 1H, 4H, and daily. A warning on two or more of those while a signal fires on your 15m is meaningful context.

17. Performance notes from testing
The Livermore preset on 15m across multiple instruments (MNQ, BTC futures, micro gold, crude oil) showed the following general ranges across several hundred signals. These are not guarantees and will vary by instrument and market conditions.

TP1 rate: 66-75% depending on instrument
TP2 rate: 27-45%
TP3 rate: 14-25%
Long win rate (TP1 as measure): 68-80%
Short win rate (TP1 as measure): 55-70%
The gap between long and short rates reflects the natural long bias of most risk assets over time. Instruments with persistent directional trends tend to show higher rates in the direction of that trend.
A 10-bar cooldown showed better results than 5 bars or 50 bars in testing. At 5 bars, too many signals clustered around the same level. At 50 bars, valid retests were missed entirely. At 10 bars, the indicator captures the initial breakout and the first meaningful retest while filtering pure noise.
These numbers should be treated as starting points for your own testing, not as targets to optimize around. Your instrument, timeframe, and current market regime will all affect them.

18. Alerts
The indicator includes eight alert conditions accessible through TradingView's alert system:
- Long signal confirmed
- Short signal confirmed
- Failed breakout detected
- Htf bear reversal warning (2+ timeframes)
- Htf bull reversal warning (2+ timeframes)
- Bull divergence detected
- Bear divergence detected
- Level watching (price approaching key htf level)
Set the alert on "once per bar close" for the cleanest signals without repainting on the current bar.

19. Compatibility
Works on all instruments: equities, ETFs, crypto, forex, futures, indices, commodities.
Works on all timeframes from 1m to monthly.
No hardcoded tick sizes, contract specifications, or session times.
No repainting on closed bars. The current bar may repaint as it develops, which is expected behavior for any indicator.
Pine Script v6. Requires TradingView Essential plan or above for the best performance due to the multiple request.security calls used for htf levels.

20. What this indicator does not do
- Does not connect to any broker
- Does not place trades automatically
- Does not guarantee any level of profitability
- Does not predict future price movement
- Does not work without price data — it needs bars to calculate
- Does not replace your own market analysis and judgment

The indicator provides structured visual context and a confirmation framework. The decision to enter, manage, and exit a trade remains entirely yours.

21. Disclaimer
This indicator is provided for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this document constitutes financial advice or any form of recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument.
All trading decisions are made entirely by the user. Trading financial instruments involves substantial risk of loss. Past indicator performance on historical data is not indicative of future results. You may lose all of your invested capital.
Anonycryptous accepts no responsibility or liability for any trading losses incurred as a result of using this indicator.