(binned per thread starter’s request) MM (Money Maker) Detective

@Ferdinando -- thanks for the explanation -- it helps a lot.

I'm hesitant to ask -- have you checked for repainting?

already asked
check post 5568

@Merka -- I asked if it repainted. That was not answered in post #5568.

Furthermore, an indicator can issue "confirmations" from now until the sun freezes over -- but if an indicator is to be used for trading then those confirmations have to be computed in real-time.

Repainting refers to how an indicator behaves in real-time. Behavior in real-time is important because that's when we trade. We do not trade historical data.

@R4M you don’t want to waste your time on this.

Endless confirmations. Easiest way to lose your money & time. In less than 3 mins on strategy tester, you will clear your doubts.

While I have no skin in this game - I have to agree with BD .

Unless there is something seriously flawed with your current method, I see no reason to change horses mid-stream.

@bishopdotun -- thanks, I agree. I guess I was hoping that either @ferdinando or @Merka would be the ones to check that using Strategy Tester.

By the way, still no takers for my post #5549?
https://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=12423052#post12423052

Is it because no one knows and are too embarrassed to ask? Or because no one really cares? I hope it is the former. If you are embarrassed, don't be. I was two years into trading forex before someone pointed these out to me. Also, the embarrassment is only temporary, whereas the knowledge you gain stays with you forever. Looks to me like no future scientists in this crowd...

Ok robots4me,ive been a lurker on here from day one, ill take the bullet for everyone else, can you give us the answers to post 5549? :-]

deleted


Sorry R4M - I saw your post to @Nozzer and realized what you were trying to do ...mea culpa

@nozzer -- a man with courage. You get two gold stars...

I don't want to simply blurt out answers -- I've posted them elsewhere but I'm to lazy to search for them.

Instead I would prefer walking you through one question at a time -- mostly asking questions that will lead you (and others) to figuring it out yourself. And the answers are all simple -- afterwards you'll probably slap yourself on the forehead wondering why most people are willing to perpetuate bars, ticks, repainting, shifting as a black box.

@almo -- you are a champ. I don't necessarily agree with your answers -- but that is immaterial. We could both be right. It could be I didn't properly frame the question in a way to illicit the answer I was expecting. The important thing is to be willing to look at the data as more than just colored bars on a chart.

So, let me respond to your answers and we'll see if we need to make any adjustments.


Question #1:
H4 refers to a 4-hour chart or a 4-hour bar. H1 refers to a 1-hour chart of a 1-hour bar. Is an H4 bar made up of 4 H1 bars. If "yes", please explain. If "no", please explain.

Yes (and no) - H4 as per MQL4 refers to the time frame , which can have 1 or more 4 hour bars. Each 4 hour bar consists of 4 one (1) HR bars, with the exception of the current bar as that is technically still active and not considered closed until a 4 hr period has completed.

@robots4me -- a hint -- there is no such thing as bars -- only ticks (current price). The data feed from your broker consists of the current Ask and spread (I believe). Bars are artificial constructs that are created by your MT4 application. The H4 bar does not use H1 bars.


Question #2:
The most recent bar shifts (i.e. recalculates) -- 'True' of 'False'? If 'True', please explain. If 'False', please explain.

True - this occurs due to the candle not being closed.

@robots4me: Correct. But every candle, including the current one, has an OHLC (Open, High, Low, Close), and almost every indicator uses some combination of these when performing its calculations. What exactly causes the current bar to shift? What part of a candle shifts? What part remains static?


Question #3:
If the most recent bar shifts, then is there a way to prevent shifting? If "yes", please explain. Also, if "yes", please explain the consequences if an algorithm was coded to prevent shifting.

Yes - Use the previous bars data (either Open/Close for Time, HIgh /Low for Range)
Consequences are that you are working with delayed data - i.e - your indicator is not current (this could be a important when calculating things like ADR and such)

@robots4me: I agree the answer is "yes". But I specifically referred to the most recent bar -- i.e. the current bar. You can't use data from the previous bar.


Question #4: (my favorite)
Is there a difference between repainting and recalculating (i.e. shifting)? If "yes", please explain. If an algorithm repaints is there a way to prevent repainting? If "yes", please explain.

Yes - Repainting can occur after a bar completes , recalculating occurs during the current bar.

@robots4me: I agree there is a difference. But repainting can occur at other times besides bar closing. What causes repainting? Yes -- recalculating (also referred to as shifting) occurs only during the current bar. But, more exact, what causes recalculation / shifting?


Question #5:
Let's suppose we are monitoring the current candle on an H4 chart. A candle has 4 parts -- Open, High, Low, Close. Is the current candle static? If yes, please explain. If no, please explain.

No - the current candle is fluid until Time[Close[0]} = Time {Open[0] + 1} (+1 since we are referencing everythng as H4...else its +4 }

@robots4me: I agree, the answer is no. But I'm looking for a simple answer -- using Open, High, Low, Close and ticks. The hint is ticks -- all there are are ticks. The real data is ticks -- so, you need to think in terms of the real data.


Question #6:
Again -- let's suppose we are monitoring the current candle on an H4 chart. When do you know its Close price? Also, at what time does its close price occur?

Same answer as Question 5

@robots4me: 'No' is not an answer to a question that begins with 'When'. Again -- think in terms of ticks.

@almo -- no need to delete -- your post was great. And it provides a good jumping off point for me to encourage people to look a bit deeper. Also, I didn't necessarily agree with all your answers, which could lead to further discussion. At least I was able to capture your post before you deleted it, as you can see from my post above.

@almo -- this is a great start. Thanks for taking the plunge...

Sadly I didn't realize this was a 'teachable moment' until I hit the Reply button and saw @Nozzer's post && Your response to @Nozzer. I may have reacted too quickly with that deletion...FF should give the option to minimize your own response for just such an event


Regardless - thank you for your response. I had never considered the data as being ticks until you brought it up. That does beg the question how does one capture/collate the tick data?

No need to answer that....I was just thinking out loud.

Hello R4M! Can you take a look at this? Maybe in version 2 in the near future? Yes or no it's ok, you have done a lot already. Thanks.

https://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=12423157#post12423157

@almo -- yes, that made a big difference for me. I mean, I still think in terms of bars, but there are often times I need to remind myself there really are only ticks -- e.g. when the issues of repainting and shifting come.

People wave their arms with what they think is occurring or what the implications may be -- but when they don't mention anything about ticks then I know they're just blowing smoke and don't really understand.

If you can get your head around the fact there are only ticks and the time frame boundaries are totally arbitrary, then a light bulb goes on. Does anyone really believe there is anything magical about M1, M5, M15, ... Why couldn't it be M7.453 or M23.724? And, of course, it could. The PA charts we are familiar with simply compress a bunch of ticks into a single bar so price can be displayed on a monitor. If MT4 were to only display ticks you then it could only fit the most recent 2 minutes worth of prices on a 1024 pixel monitor.

That's what MT4 does. It captures the tick data from your broker's data feed, and "collates" or compresses the ticks into bars for human consumption.

Also, if you right-click a symbol you can select 'Tick Chart' to see the true data as it comes in.

Hi R4ME, The beauty about this indicator is that the confirmations are computed in real time on that same signal bar and only takes seconds. Once the reversal conditions are not confirmed ,then the flashing arrow will not stay on the chart since no reversal took place.

Kind Regards

Ferdinando

Is everyone getting alerts from the dashboard? I noticed I got my highlighted buttons and signals on chart but I am not getting the pop up alert.

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Hi Bishop, The confirmations are computed in real time and only takes seconds to determine whether a reversal condition exist or not on that same signal bar. Once confirmed the indi prints a reversal arrow that stays on the chart.

Kind Regards

Ferdinando

Shifting...

Question #5:
Let's suppose we are monitoring the current candle on an H4 chart. A candle has 4 parts -- Open, High, Low, Close. Is the current candle static? If yes, please explain. If no, please explain.

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

Consider the current OHLC candle on your price chart. MT4 uses the incoming, raw tick data to create a "human friendly" OHLC candle. An OHLC candle has 4 properties -- an Open price, a High price, a Low price and a Close price.

In MT4 candle data is accessed via arrays that are indexed from [0,N], where '0' is the most recent data element and 'N' is the oldest data element.

The image above represents a bullish candle and I have marked its Open[0], High[0], Low[0] and Close[0] prices.

As I mentioned in the post above there is only tick data. So I want to explain how MT4 assigns values to a candle's Open, High, Low and Close price.

And about tick data -- it arrives randomly. You can not predict when the next tick will arrive (with one exception). Tick data represents a change in price and spread and that will vary by symbol and time of day. Furthermore, every time frame receives the exact same tick data (with one exception). That is -- your EURUSD-M1 receives the exact same tick data as your EURUSD-D1 chart (with one exception). Indicators and EAs perform calculations with the arrival of each tick -- which means your EURUSD-M1 indicator performs as many calculations as your EURUSD-D1 indicator (unless the programmer explicitly programs the software to only perform calculations on the first tick).

Okay -- so how are the OHLC values assigned for an H1 candle? To begin with, at the top of the hour your MT4 broker GUARANTEES that your H1 chart will receive a tick. The odds of that tick being a "true" tick -- i.e. a new price -- are very slim. That first tick that arrives at the top of the hour is your broker's most recent price. It may have arrived a few microseconds, seconds, minutes, hours earlier -- we don't know. All we know is that at the top of the hour we are GUARANTEED to receive the broker's most recent price. That first tick, the one that is guaranteed, is our Open[0] price. It is carved in stone. It will not change during the current bar's lifetime.

Okay -- over the course of the H1 candle's lifetime many more ticks will be arriving. If a tick price is higher than any previous tick, then that becomes High[0]. Similarly, if a tick price is lower than any previous tick, then that becomes Low[0]. Not every tick will affect the High[0] and Low[0] -- only certain ones. However, the consequence is that whereas Open[0] is static and fixed during the hour, the High[0] and Low[0] are susceptible to change.

And now we come to Close[0] -- this is the most interesting one. Close[0] is assigned the tick price (i.e. the current Ask). That means it changes with every tick. I'll repeat -- Close[0] changes with every tick. This is what results in "shifting". You may not see it because the changes in price with each tick are small, but it does change.

Okay -- so let's say some curious person then asks "Why call it Close[0] when it is constantly changing?" The reason is this -- look at the candle, it has a body and two wicks. The body is represented as a rectangle with a bottom and a top. In the case of a bullish candle the bottom is fixed as the Open price. We also need a top price in order to draw a candle's body. "Close" was chosen to refer to the top price. Technically, that's correct. It's the Close price of the candle at that moment. The candle's body may change over the next hour, but at the moment a tick arrives that candle's body is correctly drawn using the fixed Open[0] and the shifting Close[0].

Another point -- when do you know for sure a candle's "final" Close price? The answer is you don't know until you receive the next Open tick at the top of the hour. At the top of the hour MT4 looks back through its collection of ticks and chooses the last one to be the final Close price. That last tick may have arrived a few seconds before the new Open tick or 30 minutes prior. MT4 does not guarantee a Close tick at the end of the hour -- instead, it uses its last known tick.

Another point -- are the previous Close price Close[1] and the new Open price Open[0] the same? They may be or they may not be. Remember, the Close price only becomes fixed at the beginning of the hour and MT4 uses its last known tick. That last known tick may also be used for the Open[0] price, but not necessarily. It depends on how frequently ticks arrive as to whether Close[1] and Open[0] will be the same.

And finally, above I mentioned that all the time frames receive the exact same tick data -- but with one exception. An M5 chart is guaranteed to receive a tick from your broker at the beginning of every 5 minute time stamp -- regardless of whether the price has changed. An H1 chart is only guaranteed to receive a tick at the top of the hour. The guaranteed ticks -- call them "virtual" ticks -- that M5 receives will not be received by H1. However, all other ticks -- the true ones -- will be received by both M5 and H1.

Shifting (continued)...



Check-out the screen shot above -- I've drawn a W1 bar over an M15 chart. This is similar to what we do in the BD Strategy -- we overlay a W1 uninterpolated TMA over a lower time frame.

The yellow arrows point at the Close[0] for the most recent M15 candle and also the W1 candle. Since the M15 candle is so small we don't see the effect of shifting on its Close[0]. But when you overlay W1 on a lower time frame chart then that is equivalent to zooming-in -- perhaps a couple orders of magnitude. Because we've zoomed-in on W1 then it's easier to see its Close[0] shifting.

Shifting occurs with all Close[0] bars in all time frames. It is just more apparent in the BD strategy because we zoom-in on W1.

You need only 3 minutes on strategy tester to realize that those indicator collections are simply abortion pills for your money and time.

I can’t change your mind and I won’t.