Vortex Indicator Tested: VI+ and VI− Crossed 33 Times a Day on EURUSD M5, and 1 of 20 Runs Passed

The Vortex Indicator was published by Etienne Botes and Douglas Siepman in 2010. The idea comes from the way water swirls: an up move is measured from the previous bar’s low to this bar’s high, a down move from the previous high to this low. When the up swirls are bigger, VI+ sits above VI− and the trend is up. When the lines cross, the trend is meant to have turned.

That makes it a close cousin of Welles Wilder’s +DI and −DI, the lines under the ADX. It is not built into MetaTrader 4, so traders install a free copy and usually trade the cross. A cross is easy to count, so I counted it.

How is the Vortex Indicator calculated?

Both lines hover around 1.0. On our charts the median gap between them was only 0.22 to 0.25, so a few bars of larger range on one side are enough to flip them. Either line was above 1.10 on 35% of EURUSD M5 bars and on about half of gold bars.

How was it tested?

• Data: EURUSD M5 from June 3 to August 26, 2026, 16,926 bars; gold M5 from June 16 to August 26, 13,736 bars. M15 built from the same bars.
• Five rules: the plain VI+/VI− cross; the cross only on the EMA 200 side; the cross confirmed by one more closed bar (enter a bar later if the lines are still crossed); the cross only when the ADX 14 is above 25; and a “clear gap” rule that enters only when the lines are more than 0.10 apart.
• Exit and pass: stop 1.5 ATR, target 3 ATR, 48 bars at most, one trade at a time, the same exit as in the forex indicators list, ranked. Cost 1 pip on EURUSD and $0.30 an ounce on gold, from spread and swap costs in MT4. A run passes if it makes money after cost, in both halves (split July 15), and beats the 95th percentile of 200 random-entry runs with the same exit, as in algorithmic rule vs random entry.

How often do VI+ and VI− cross?

On M5 a cross came about every 15 minutes, and almost half of them reversed before a quarter of an hour was over. The reason is in the formula: both lines are built from the last n bars of highs and lows, and one wide bar entering or leaving the window shifts them.

The last two rows are the real verdict on the cross as a signal. Over the next hour on M5, or three hours on M15, a fresh cross told you nothing about direction: the median move was zero and price followed the cross less than half the time on 3 of 4 charts.

Did any Vortex rule make money?

Trades in brackets; the random rows are for the same number of trades as the plain cross. 15 of 20 runs lost after cost, and 1 of 20 passed. On EURUSD M5 every rule did worse than the median random entry, and before cost the plain cross was already losing 0.21 pips a trade.

The one pass, the clear-gap rule on EURUSD M15, made +0.06 pips a trade in the first half and +0.09 in the second, after the 1-pip spread. It cleared the luckiest random runs by 0.14 pips. That is a pass, but a thin one: 221 trades, and a total of about 17 pips over almost three months.

The confirmed cross on gold M15 looks better on paper, +$1.93 an ounce and positive in both halves. But gold ran two long trends in this sample, down to $4,061 by July 15 and up to $4,675 by late August, and the luckiest 5% of random runs with the same exit made $2.51 or more. It did not beat chance.

Does an ADX filter fix the Vortex cross?

Crosses happen less often when the ADX is high, which makes sense: a strong trend keeps one line on top. But the crosses that did come in a strong trend were no better. On gold they were slightly worse, because a cross against a running trend is usually a pause, not a turn. The ADX 25 rule itself is measured in the ADX 25 trend filter test.

What would I do with the Vortex Indicator?

• Do not trade the raw cross on M5. At around 30 crosses a day, almost half undone within 3 bars, it lost on both pairs.
• If you trade it, demand a gap. The only pass came from waiting until the lines were 0.10 apart, on M15. That cut the noise without adding much delay.
• Know that it moves with the ADX lines. VI+ minus VI− correlated with +DI minus −DI at 0.74 to 0.79; the head-to-head is in Vortex vs ADX.
• Try a longer period before the default. 18 settings per chart, and how to install it, are in Vortex Indicator settings for MT4.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Vortex Indicator?

A two-line trend indicator by Botes and Siepman. VI+ measures up movement from the previous low to the current high, VI− down movement from the previous high to the current low, both divided by the true range over 14 bars.

How do you trade the Vortex Indicator?

The usual rule buys when VI+ crosses above VI− and sells on the opposite cross. In this test the plain cross lost on 3 of 4 charts after cost, from 0.09 pips a trade on EURUSD M15 to 1.21 pips on EURUSD M5.

Is the Vortex Indicator good for scalping?

Not on our M5 data. The lines crossed 30 to 33 times a trading day, and all five rules lost on EURUSD M5, every one worse than the median random entry.

Does the Vortex Indicator repaint?

No. It uses closed highs, lows and closes. The current bar’s values change until the bar closes, so all signals here were taken on closed bars.

Is the Vortex Indicator in MT4?

Not as a built-in indicator. Free versions are available in the MQL5 code base and install into the MQL4, Indicators folder; the steps are in the settings guide linked above.