Charting high/low/close and open/close widths

[gluebunny]

Hi there, I've always been a bit frustrated with NT in that I can't adjust the bars to be quite the right thickness, combined with a small width open/close tick since the open/close tick lines change in width relative to the thickness of the bar. Basically with alt-arrows and ctrl-arrows I can't quite get the proper vertical bar thickness with small open/close line widths and proper spacing. It would be nice if all of these were individually adjustable. Maybe make Alt-left/right arrows be "open/close horizontal width"?

But, that's not my main question. The main one is am I able to chart just high/low/close? I don't care about open. I don't want it sullying my chart. I can't seem to figure out how to make it do this. Every other charting program I've used allows it, so I'm sure NT does...just darned if I can figure out how to do so. Basically I want "HiLo" but with "tiny" ticks for close.

Thanks for any tips (on either question)

[pauly139]

Creating HLC bars

Hi

It is quite easy. Select the HiLo bars, then add an EMA indicator with a period of 1, and plot that using a dot. Voila, HLC bars!

HTH
Paul.

[gluebunny]

Hm, very close, thanks. Two issues to solve

1) I can't affect the size of the dot and size 1 is too large (can probably do this with a custom EMA)

2) The colour doesn't match the bar if I colour bars, again, can probably be solved with a custom EMA.

Thanks, I'll poke around with EMA later and get something going.

Cheers

[anachronist]

It is quite easy. Select the HiLo bars, then add an EMA indicator with a period of 1, and plot that using a dot. Voila, HLC bars!

You could try plotting it using a hash also.

This is a kludgey workaround to a real limitation in NinjaTrader. No solution you work up yourself will be adequate. The real answer is for the NT development team to agree to expand the plot types available. There should be just one type of bar plot, OHLC, with properties that you can set to turn off the O or C as needed.

-Alex

[pauly139]

Hi

I choose to be happy with the solution, as it is exactly that. I had a requirement, this addresses it.

Sorry to hear you choose to be unhappy with it.

Rgds
Paul

[anachronist]

I'm glad to hear the solution works for you.

I'll be the first to agree that when you need to get something to work, you often have to work around limitations. I've sure created enough kludges to solve such problems in my time, on other platforms besides NinjaTrader. And no, I am not happy about having to do so.

-Alex

[gluebunny]

I somewhat agree, it's nicer when the package support it rather than having to hack around the lack of. Hopefully the NT team takes this up as a task and schedules it into their next release.

Cheers

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

Thanks for the suggestion. To clarify, having selectable O and C being selected will solve all issues related to this thread? I will forward this to development.

[gluebunny]

Mostly. Having O/C being selectable yes.

And also have O/C ticks be able to be made thin/thick and wide/thin individually of the main bar and each other.

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

gluebunny,

I am not sure what you mean by thin/thick and wide/thin. Please post a screenshot of what you mean. Thanks.

[gluebunny]

The open and close tick lines have thicknesses, and widths. Right now those adjust based on ctrl-arrows and alt-arrows that affect the entire bar AND the O/C tick lines. Having those independantly adjustable would be nice.

eg: I want nice thick bars, closely spaced, and very small tiny 2 by 1 pixel close ticks.

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

Thank you for your suggestion. I will forward it to development.