Does the time formation of candlesticks matter for a trader?

[JSOP]

Lets say you trade 15 minute candlesticks and they form at 1:10pm, 1:25pm, 1:40pm, 1:55pm, 2:10pm, etc, instead of the usual 1:00pm, 1:15pm, 1:30pm, 1:45pm. Do you think this would have an effect on your ability to read price action or be unsynchronized with the market? Would there be an edge in using odd timeframes that people usually don't study like 7mins, 18mins, 48mins?

I have always wondered about that, whether using infrequently used timeframe and/or with odd frequency would actually be able to allow you to see a pattern before others, i.e. a doji forming on a 10-min. chart before it actually appeared on a 15-min. chart? But then again, the opposite might also happen in that you might miss a pattern that showed up in 15-min. chart but just didn't materialize on the 10-min. chart.

I think the best way is backtest them. TOS does offer different timeframes in their charts that are different from the conventional ones so you might want to test it out to see if there is really any benefit in using unconventional timeframes.

 

[HawaiianIceberg]

Lets say you trade 15 minute candlesticks and they form at 1:10pm, 1:25pm, 1:40pm, 1:55pm, 2:10pm, etc, instead of the usual 1:00pm, 1:15pm, 1:30pm, 1:45pm. Do you think this would have an effect on your ability to read price action or be unsynchronized with the market? Would there be an edge in using odd timeframes that people usually don't study like 7mins, 18mins, 48mins?

I've looked at offsetting timeframes like this before (even down to a 10 sec offset on a minute chart), but did not see anything beneficial. This was with ES

Trader Curt nailed it IMO: "It's all the same thing"

 

[tiddlywinks]

The market STREAMS data, nearly 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.
It is the market participants that choose or not to visually inspect the data stream as bundles.
Bundles of time are only one type of data bundle. To some extent a "herd" has influence as to outcomes of some popular data bundle/segment analysis.

 

[murray t turtle]

Lets say you trade 15 minute candlesticks and they form at 1:10pm, 1:25pm, 1:40pm, 1:55pm, 2:10pm, etc, instead of the usual 1:00pm, 1:15pm, 1:30pm, 1:45pm. Do you think this would have an effect on your ability to read price action or be unsynchronized with the market? Would there be an edge in using odd timeframes that people usually don't study like 7mins, 18mins, 48mins?

%%
YES/There could have been;
until you mentioned it /LOL
NO, not much of an edge in odd timeframes like 48min.
Actually\ anybody with discretion, would not automatic wait for a 4 hour or 48 minute candle close; especially with the regular market hours not being 8 hours
So, no , its not ''the same thing'' + markets dont close or open @ odd minutes......... Good thinking anyway

 

[wrbtrader]

Lets say you trade 15 minute candlesticks and they form at 1:10pm, 1:25pm, 1:40pm, 1:55pm, 2:10pm, etc, instead of the usual 1:00pm, 1:15pm, 1:30pm, 1:45pm. Do you think this would have an effect on your ability to read price action or be unsynchronized with the market? Would there be an edge in using odd timeframes that people usually don't study like 7mins, 18mins, 48mins?

You don't need to ask us...just backtest it yourself via comparing the results of the timeframes you're talking about versus using what you refer to as "odd timeframes".

Yet, reality, your results will be different than someone else doing the same backtesting because their trade signal strategy is different than your trade signal strategy that you used to test different timeframes.

• I'm in the camp that there's no edge.

Thus, a trade strategy that's profitable via the 3min chart...should be profitable via the 5min chart, 15min chart or 67min chart.

wrbtrader

 

[piezoe]

This is a bit off the subject, but related to changes in the time axis anyway. I would like to see the rate of ticks (transactions) per unit time that accompanies a standard tick or price chart. Of course when the rate of transactions picks up one will see more tick bars printing per time , however a standard tick chart has variable x-axis (time values) per bar. I'd like to see the derivative, d-trades/dt. This could be approximated by holding t constant at some reasonably small value and counting the trades that take place in that time period. Is anyone aware of a platform that provides this function? I am not a programmer, not anymore. I grew up on programming long ago, but quit when the software I needed became commercially available, and I am to old to learn the JCL and modern programming languages and APIs needed to program today microcomputers.. I'd likely be dead by the time I learned all that new stuff.

 

[tiddlywinks]

This is a bit off the subject, but related to changes in the time axis anyway. I would like to see the rate of ticks (transactions) per unit time that accompanies a standard tick or price chart. Of course when the rate of transactions picks up one will see more tick bars printing per time , however a standard tick chart has variable x-axis (time values) per bar. I'd like to see the derivative, d-trades/dt. This could be approximated by holding t constant at some reasonably small value and counting the trades that take place in that time period. Is anyone aware of a platform that provides this function? I am not a programmer, not anymore. I grew up on programming long ago, but quit when the software I needed became commercially available, and I am to old to learn the JCL and modern programming languages and APIs needed to program today microcomputers.. I'd likely be dead by the time I learned all that new stuff.

In my world where I use VOLUME, this is called PACE, which is determined as PRO-RATED VOLUME in relation to bar closing. IOW, at each measurement the pro-rated volume tells me if volume is increasing or decreasing 1) between now and the last measurement, and 2) between the current forming bar and the previous bar, 3) at the current (now) pace, will the current bar TOTAL volume be higher, lower, or about the same as those immediately preceding, or is volume changing to a different level of increase or decrease.

If I am reading your post correctly, you want pace, determined by a pro-rated number of trades. If you are using SierraChart, I think I can help you set up such a thing.

I normally use 3 minute time-based charts, with 9 measurements per bar: one every 20 seconds. With fast-charts the time-frame really doesn't matter. The number of measurements per bar is user preference, preferably tested as useful to the trader. Jack Hershey, the person who introduced pace to me, used 5 minute bars with measurement every 12 seconds on ES.

 

[piezoe]

In my world where I use VOLUME, this is called PACE, which is determined as PRO-RATED VOLUME in relation to bar closing. IOW, at each measurement the pro-rated volume tells me if volume is increasing or decreasing 1) between now and the last measurement, and 2) between the current forming bar and the previous bar, 3) at the current (now) pace, will the current bar TOTAL volume be higher, lower, or about the same as those immediately preceding, or is volume changing to a different level of increase or decrease.

If I am reading your post correctly, you want pace, determined by a pro-rated number of trades. If you are using SierraChart, I think I can help you set up such a thing.

I normally use 3 minute time-based charts, with 9 measurements per bar: one every 20 seconds. With fast-charts the time-frame really doesn't matter. The number of measurements per bar is user preference, preferably tested as useful to the trader. Jack Hershey, the person who introduced pace to me, used 5 minute bars with measurement every 12 seconds on ES.

Wow. Thank you. I always wanted to look at the rate of trades going of, as I had this idea that at the beginning of a significant change in price direction there might be, in general, a burst of trades. I never got to test the idea though, and I seldom trade short term now. But I did not know about "pace" which I appreciate you telling me about. If I ever do go back to shorter time scale trading, then I think I would use Sierra Charts.

The way you've described pace, it seems that it would give you similar information. Of course volume is the total number of shares or contracts traded in a particular period, and I guess pace, if I understood you correctly, is a relative measure of volume compared to the same time in the previous volume bar. Ticks in a tick chart on the other hand are simply trades regardless of volume (size of trade), and that leaves me wondering if the "tape" is any more reliable short term when reporting trades than when reporting volume. I always found there to be a lot of revisions to volume.

Thanks again for a really informative post. I think a lot of traders are going to find it useful.

 

[tiddlywinks]

Ticks in a tick chart on the other hand are simply trades regardless of volume

And that is why I do not give a hoot about # of trades. 1 trade of 1 million shares or whatever would not be useful with a pro-rate # of trades measurement. OTOH, 1 million shares, via 1 trade or 10000 trades would/could give insight via a pro-rate volume measurement.

Good trading to ya!

 

[ThinkOrSwim Ranger]

An interesting idea, but devoid of practical use. All institutional players work on a standard 15 minute. And all decisions are made based on this value. Those. in your case it will be swimming against the current.