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: vbars4.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!
very, very cool Richard. This had been around for awhile in MT4 and I missed it in ninja. I always thought this method of viewing gives you a more complete picture because of the nesting vs looking at 2 charts. You da man. I read very few trading sites anymore but your’s is top of the list…
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving and can spend it with family. Chris
Thank you, I will try this out, it looks simple and easy to see bigger timeframe for me.
Great!
Jojo
Richard, cool indicator. One question, I have a SBS 3 Tic renko chart set up inside your 5 min virtual bars, but a new bar doesn’t form every 5 min. The current bar keeps on going unless I go into the list of applied indicators to this chart and click on apply. Then it will update to reflect all the previous 5 min bars. Am I doing something wrong?
Jeff: sorry not sure what you mean. Can you send screenshot of what’s happening? Lots of people besides me are using it successfully now, so I’m sure we can get it working for you.
You the man Richard. Have an awesome turkey day.
I agree with Scalpwiz….. You da man .
Thank you, both of you!
This is a really great indicator, I just discovered it… it is invaluable for reading price action across multiple time frames. Thanks a lot!