Virtual Bars Indicator
Posted on November 25th, 2009
Written by Richard
Posted in: N/A (old archives)
Every so often, people ask me about an indicator that will make virtual large bars on top of their faster trading bars. The idea is to be able to visualize the larger-scale context without resorting to a second chart. In the spirit of the upcoming US Thanksgiving holiday, I made one today for ninja. And, I kinda like it!
The basic idea came from a post on TL which was showing an MT4 indicator, I think. It basically grouped together bars and drew an outline of a higher-timeframe candle around it. So that’s what I did, but I didn’t restrict myself to minute bars. Here’s an interesting application: grouping renko bars into groups of 10, to see their overall trend.
That’s visually a little difficult, but you can lighten up your bars to make them sort-of fade into the background. I think that’s a pretty attractive way to go:
Still, after my initial release, Gabe on TL suggested an alternate way to draw the candles. A boxy style where the outline contained the whole range, and a filled-in section represented the body. At first, I didn’t like the idea. After trying it, though, it’s my preferred way of viewing the inidcator:
Anyway, you have all the options at your disposal.
If you use the time option (groupbyminutes=true), then you can group every 10 minutes instead of every 10 bars, and this works on renko, volume, tick, you-name-it charts as well as it does on minute-charts:
Of course, the original intended application is to be able to visualize what’s happening inside your minute bars. Yeah, it has a hammer shape, but did price dive down and then run up, or was price zig-zagging all over the place and happened to close the bar in a hammer-shape? You could check a faster chart, or you could just use a composite chart built via this indicator:
(above I’m showing straight 15-minute candles, and the composite chart you could be using instead with 1-minute detail inside the 15-minute groups)
Anyway, the indicator (one of many I’ve released in the team area, BTW… yeah I know I shouldn’t tease!), is available here for free, in open code, for ninjatrader: vbars5.zip
(edit 2009/11/25: I’ve updated the code with a ‘gapless’ feature, and re-written the timing code since vbars3.zip was posted. You probably want to download this new version if you like the indicator)
Enjoy!
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© 2010 Richard Todd. I am not a financial advisor, and nothing on the site should be considered investment advice or actionable recommendations. I'm just an individual, saying what I think, and sharing my experiences.