Strange behavior of Formula studies

[DanDuchardt]

I've been playing with some studies on Renko charts. It seems to not matter which ones I use, but for example I used the sample Backtest formulas BtMovingAverage.efs and BtStochastic.efs. Both appear to do the "right thing" when applied to a chart, and to follow the data when the chart is scrolled left and right. However, last night I found that if I put the chart in replay mode both these studies are frozen on the chart. As the data bars advance, the basic studies I have turned on advance with them, but the Formula studies with color bars do not move at all.

Today I noticed the same problem at times with real time updates. It was not consistent, but many times I found that the color bars and associated lines for at least the moving average study were not advancing. I'm not sure about the Stochastics study, but I think it was moving properly (it definitely does not move during replay). The only thing I could identify that MIGHT determine wether the study moves or not is if the chart in question was the last active window on the eSignal desktop. When it was the last active, I believe the study moved properly. If not it became frozen.

[Biomech]

ditto

I've been having this same problem since I started using Renko charts about a month ago. Replay doesn't work. Formulas don't work. Real-time works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. This is HIGHLY ANNOYING. A Renko chart does not update with every x number of minutes. It is supposed to update when the data is there to update it. If I have some indicators that I am waiting to do something to trigger a trade, I MISS TRADES BECAUSE THE WINDOW DOESN'T UPDATE PROPERLY.

Can we PLEASE get some kind of idea when this will be fixed? My strategy is highly dependent on these working right.

[DanDuchardt]

Re: ditto

Nice to know I'm not the only one.

The refresh rate of the Renko chart is set by the period you enter. I agree it would be nice to see each bar update when price changes, but you are set to use some part of a period bar to follow, e.g. close or open or high etc. What would those mean if there was no way of establishing a bar?

You can speed up the chart if you have the bandwidth to support tick data. Instead of entering just an integer for time, you can run it in seconds using ##s, e.g. 30s or 15s. You can also use ##t for some number of ticks or ##v for some volume count. Each of these defines a bar of some length.

Originally posted by Biomech
I've been having this same problem since I started using Renko charts about a month ago. Replay doesn't work. Formulas don't work. Real-time works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. This is HIGHLY ANNOYING. A Renko chart does not update with every x number of minutes. It is supposed to update when the data is there to update it. If I have some indicators that I am waiting to do something to trigger a trade, I MISS TRADES BECAUSE THE WINDOW DOESN'T UPDATE PROPERLY.

Can we PLEASE get some kind of idea when this will be fixed? My strategy is highly dependent on these working right.

[DanDuchardt]

Re: Strange behavior of Formula studies

Update: I was wrong about the Stochastics moving properly. This morning I had the sotchastics line moving, but the color bars were frozen.

Originally posted by DanDuchardt
Today I noticed the same problem at times with real time updates. It was not consistent, but many times I found that the color bars and associated lines for at least the moving average study were not advancing. I'm not sure about the Stochastics study, but I think it was moving properly (it definitely does not move during replay). The only thing I could identify that MIGHT determine wether the study moves or not is if the chart in question was the last active window on the eSignal desktop. When it was the last active, I believe the study moved properly. If not it became frozen.

[Biomech]

Re: Re: ditto

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. I know the renko doesn't update mid-bar. The problem I have is that even at the end of an X minute bar, when it is supposed to update if there is enough of a move, it doesn't update. If I switch from 1min to 5min then back to 1min, the new data is now there. Sometimes the data does update, but the formulas are wrong. I switch time frames back and forth and the formula for the last couple bars can look different.

I can't very well trade off of this. It cost me another 150 bucks today because I got a signal late. I guess I will have to change time frames back and forth every minute if I want to make sure that I have the latest chart. I don't imagine it will take me long to get tired of that and go find a charting program that actually works the way it is advertised to work.

Originally posted by DanDuchardt
Nice to know I'm not the only one.

The refresh rate of the Renko chart is set by the period you enter. I agree it would be nice to see each bar update when price changes, but you are set to use some part of a period bar to follow, e.g. close or open or high etc. What would those mean if there was no way of establishing a bar?

You can speed up the chart if you have the bandwidth to support tick data. Instead of entering just an integer for time, you can run it in seconds using ##s, e.g. 30s or 15s. You can also use ##t for some number of ticks or ##v for some volume count. Each of these defines a bar of some length.

I have had the same problem, I resolved it partially with decreasing the period to 20 seconds. I really like renko, but I have found it very difficult to trade with. I've also had significant problems applying technical analysis to it (e.g. bollinger bands). I find that I have to refresh the calulation every 15 minutes or so, otherwise it becomes out of sinc with the chart. Since I am trying to use the renko with an automated trading routine over the day, I have found its usefullness to be minimal. If anyone has found a solution to the problem, let me know.

[whizz]

I had posted some renko charts on silicon investor last week, and one of the esignal staff contacted me to ask me a few questions about it.

To make a long story short, It ended up with an email from him saying that they believe they have found a bug in the code which updates renko charts and it was being forwarded to their development staff.

I'd sure love to get a comment from esignal about this, since I too have found that those charts help me tremendously in my trading.