Just wondering... for stock /index traders, what time does your 60 min bar chart start ? 9:30 ET each new bar starting at half past or 9am each new bar starting at the hour? I was under the impression that most charting packages used the former setting and that that 's what I had to look at.
I used 2 trade stock 60 min bars. I found it more useful to have the 1st bar represent the 1st half hour, then the following bars start on the hour. This is because I wanted the opening volatility 2 b contained in 1 bar rather than be hidden in the following reaction. The down side is that the last bar is a full hour (of course) so you lose the volatility of the last half hour in the the last bar.
I have mine starting avery hour and it includes pre-market and post market data. I use 5, 15 min for trading and 60 min for confirmation mostly.
I've always made the assumption that hourly bars are a carry over from the days when charting software was less capable that most packages available today. A 60 Min bar chart just never made sense to me for charting a market that trades ( RTH ) 6 1/2 hours. You either have to include some extended hours trade or put up with one of the bars being a 30 Min bar in the midst of mostly 60 Min bars. In addition to the suggestions already made have you considered 56, 65 or 78 Min bars. 65 and 78 would be my first choices giving you and even 7 and 5 bars per day.