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Trendlines not matching from Higher Timeframe to lower Timeframe?
If you are using 'tick' charts and not 'time' charts, then it should not matter. Price is price right?
Doesn't matter which bar it is on. The reason this confuses me is because I never had this issue on TradeStation and to me this 'SHOULD' not be happening in Ninja, but again, maybe I don't get what you are saying.
An anchor point based on a tick bar on a Low, connecting to a tick bar of another low should matter as that PRICE is the same across any charts.
LOL, I love this thread. Price is not the problem, price is always Y. The point is the resolution of the chart and how it affects the x ordinates of the anchor points. If you have a high resolution chart - let us say a 1-Tick chart, the trendline will be correctly drawn.
If you have a low resolution chart - such as a 60 min chart - the anchor point of the trendline will use that high or low of the 60 min bar, but the exact time of that low is somewhere hidden by that 60 min bar.
As an example see the charts below. I draw a trendline on a 60 min chart by using F3 and selecting the points A and B as anchor points. On the 60 minute chart the first low A has a time stamop of 5:30 PM CET. Now if I change the resolution of the chart from 60 min to 1 min, the anchor point will remain at 5:30 PM CET. However the actual already occured at 4:41 PM and not at 5:30 PM. This information was not available on the 60 minute chart.
And now my trendline anchor point is 49 bars away from the real connection point for the trendline.
The Problem
If you draw a trend line on a high resolution - small bar period - chart and convert this to a lower resolution - high bar period - chart, the connection points will be less than one bar off.
However, if you are the lazy guy who draws trend lines on a daily chart and then changes to a higher resolution, you will find that the connection points are ways off.
How to deal with the problem
(1) Start with a low resolution chart and draw an inaccurate trendline (chart 1)
(2) Change the resolution of that chart to create a trend line which is off.
(3) Now edit the trendline and enter manually the correct start time, end time and the highs and lows.
Or get yourself a multi-timeframe indicator which detects the highs and lows by using a high resolution secondary bar series and then automatically trace the trendlines based on that algorithm.
Thanks for your feedback and I guess I still don't get it and will have to wrap my brain around it a little longer. To me, price is price and I guess what you are saying is that the trendline is both x, y of time, price and not just price.
I wonder if there is a way to create an indicator that will put trendlines only off of price as I didn't get your MTF concept. : )
No, that is not what I am saying. Price is indeed price, and there is no change between the chart.
The anchor points of the ray get a time stamp. These time-stamps depend on the chart selected. Let me try a very simple example again.
(1) ES makes a low at 10:05 AM. You want to attach the trendline to this low.
(2) On a 60 minute chart you attach your trendline to the 11:00 AM bar, so your trendline anchor point gets a time stamp of 11:00 AM
(3) On a 30 minute chart you attach your trendline to the lowest point of the 10:30 AM bar, so you anchor point gets a timestamp of 10:30 AM
All anchor points have the same y value for price, but different x values for time.
If you transpose the trnedline (2) to a 1-minute chart, you will see the trendline start at 11:00 AM, although the low has been made at 10:05 AM. The trendline will start with the correct price, but 55 minutes later.
If you transpose the trendline(3) to a 1-minute chart, you will see the trendline start at 10:30 AM, although the low has been made at 10:05 AM. The trendline will start with the correct price, but 25 minutes later.
Is there a way to trick the trendline when attached to two anchor points to only be attached to the 'y' value? To me, why would a trendline want to be tracked on a time bases? I think that is the issue. Maybe I am still not getting it. haha....
Thanks for the detailed explanation and when I think about what I just typed then it doesn't make sense as it needs coordinates to attach itself obviously which require (x,y). From a mathematical standpoint it makes sense, but so does so much in life. From a usability standpoint, it is worthless.
I spend a lot of time rolling back through many days on a 144 tick chart trying to find that darn pivot! Takes about 2 minutes to run back, re-attach and work it. Then, I find it actually is paying attention to the longer term (atleast other traders are...) which is interesting.
Anyways, again, thanks for your support and guidance. You are a real asset.
A trendline requires two anchor points and so you need to find x and y for each of these anchor points.
Your way of doing it: You go to a higher timeframe chart and draw the line. You select two anchor points. NinjaTrader remembers them via the price and the time stamp of the bar.
Another way of doing it: Progress from drawing your trendline manually to define the rules, how you draw them. If you have rules, you can apply these to any chart, allowing you draw the trendlines programmatically, and then you do not any longer rely on that offending time-stamp.
So you have the choice. Either draw manually and suffer from the time stamps required to catch your artistic drawings, or setup a rule and let NinjaTrader draw the trendline on its own.
I agree with you, as an ex programmer i can tell you they implemented a very basic algo to draw a trendline. I'd have gone a step further so that when you draw a trendline on a 60 minutes chart and you switch to a high resolution chart as would say Fat Tails then the line should update itself automatically. Programtically speaking, this is very easy to do. For the user these little details count.
