Does anyone trade using tick bars (i.e., candlestick charts based on ticks, e.g., 150 ticks to a bar, rather than minutes)? eSignal recently added this functionality to their Advanced Charts and I'm not really clear on how to make the best use of them. It seems like something that should be useful and I'd appreciate any tips. Thanks.
Is this in their new beta version? I have esignal and I can't get ticks in my advanced charts. What version are you running? I'm assuming tick candles would vary in their times as you may get many candles in the mornings and afternoons and few in the middle of trading. aphie
Hey underdog...(that was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid...hehe) I use 100T charts when I trade the ES. I like them better than the minute charts for a couple of reasons. First, I feel they are more "flowing" than a minute based chart. Second, they show the "heartbeat" of the market a little clearer. I recently got a letter from esignal about their new tick chart capabilities, and they put it this way: Tick charts present you with the fastest and most precise view of a stock or contract and are one of the most important tools for real-time traders. Tick charts show each tick that occurred during a selected time interval rather than only the open, high, low and close as displayed in bar charts. Now, you can create tick charts, tick bars and seconds bars in the Advanced Chart window in the new eSignal 7.1. View up to 10 days in a tick chart and show dots for each trade or connect them with a line. The chart only moves as each new update comes in, giving you a fixed amount of space for each tick. Unlike the tick charts available in eSignal's Standard Charts, eSignal 7.1's tick charts give you the ability to select a set number of ticks to make up a bar or candle. These tick bars are easy to create, and you can easily vary the number of ticks to detect upward or downward movement. Ticks can also be broken down to display movement based on seconds instead of whole minutes. The seconds chart offers a lot more details and enables you to get into the market more quickly, outpacing other traders. Here's a couple of charts, so you can try to see the difference. They're both from 07-05. The first is a 100 tick chart, the second is a 3 min chart. Hope this helps and good luck!
I love 45 and 180 tick charts. They help me to get very sharp entries on bigger picture patterns with a low level of risk. Brandon
Looking at those uneven time divisions on the horiz axis is a little weird, but its seem like a useful chart. Where do you get the version 7.1? Has it been released? Its not on the web site. Where is the link for the beta if not?
7.1 Beta is now available. Of course, it is only available to current subscribers. It was made available to Yahoo eSignal group members a while back but there is now a link from the eSignal home page (look for the announcement). I haven't tried it yet since I use eSignal with MB Trading's integrated order system and they (MBT) have not tested it yet.