Volume Based Charts Request for HELP

[BlowFish]

I have used multicharts for a while on and off. It has great promise but ultimately it ends up with me tearing my hair out. Basically there are a bunch of irritating little bugs and it just feels 'clunky'. I hope it works out for you but I'd try and give it a good long trial.

I hope that they get there eventually but it seems to take an awful long time to fix the most basic things. I actually bought it when it was $295 so no great shakes but I have wasted an awful lot of time (which is far more valuable).

Cheers,
Nick.

[brownsfan019]

So far, so good with MultiCharts and TS data. I am using TS data for now since I am paid for April. I just requested a trial from iqfeed.net for data as I plan to use that for data since they are less expensive than carrying a TS account as well.

Will keep everyone posted but I haven't really found any 'bugs' as others have reported based on how I use the charts. Mine are pretty simple though.

[brownsfan019]

4/16/07 Update - Running MC today with TS and IQfeed.net data and all worked as planned. Nice, smooth constant candles. It's actually very different to view the charts in constant fashion vs. the sporadic movements on TradeStation. Much easier on the eyes and easier to trade in my opinion.

Moral of the story - if using VBC charts, ensure that your charting platform is using 'constant' VBC's where each and every candle is the amount you set, not some randomly generated number.

[torero]

Brown, I think you can set constant in TS, in the properties field where you keep the chart prices fixed.

A quick question, on MC, are there an order entry like a Matrix or DOM? What broker are you using to do the trades?

[torero]

	Quote:	notouch
	Brownfan, how much do you really need EasyLanguage? Do you program your own unique indicators with it? If not I would choose Ensign over MultiCharts. There's so much functionality within Ensign that unless you really do have some unique indicators, you probably won't need to do any coding. Volume based charting is really Ensign's niche and they have some features not found elsewhere. Having tried out the various options I would say Ensign is the best charting program and eSignal is the best data provider. I found MultiCharts buggy and Investor/RT was the worst piece of software ever (on a Windows PC - I understand it was designed for the mac). Best idea would be to get a free trial of eSignal Premier and also a free trial of Ensign and MultiCharts then you can test them all out on eSignal data for free.

notouch, does Ensign have Equivolume? TS doesn't provide it and I like to use it in the morning trades. I ran a trial in the past with them, but don't remember seeing that option. How's the coding structure, complex or simple like EasyLanguage?

[brownsfan019]

	Quote:	torero
	Brown, I think you can set constant in TS, in the properties field where you keep the chart prices fixed. A quick question, on MC, are there an order entry like a Matrix or DOM? What broker are you using to do the trades?

tor - you cannot do constant in TradeStation. They do volume charts, but it is subject to their 'interpretation'. Basically, if you set something at 500 for example when it reaches 499 and if an order for 100 hits, your new candle is now 599. And it will change all day long.

See my screenshot for explanation. Here I created a little tracker at the bottom that shows how much each candle represented there was over my threshold setting. For each larger yellow bar you see, that volume represented in that candle is OVER my setting, in this case a 5000 setting on the ES. The extremes you see here are over by 665, 670, etc. In those extreme candles, that's more than 10% of my setting...

In summary, TradeStation does not support Constant Volume Charting and for anyone reading this, you would be wise to look for alternatives if you would like your chart to be formatted correctly. I personally do not see the value of random, periodic spikes on your chart. You have no idea when they will show up or by how much over they will be, they just simply show up.

[brownsfan019]

	Quote:	torero
	notouch, does Ensign have Equivolume? TS doesn't provide it and I like to use it in the morning trades. I ran a trial in the past with them, but don't remember seeing that option. How's the coding structure, complex or simple like EasyLanguage?

tor - test out MultiCharts as well. They support EasyLanguage. They actually call it EasyLanguage. Basically, it looks like Multi is a TS knockoff with some more features. Just take a look at their web url: http://www.tssupport.com/products/multicharts/

[subq]

I know this thread is old, but I talked to Linnsoft a while back about this issue because of another thread and they now have true constant volume bars, if you have IRT slap the volume on there and you should see everything correctly.

Just thought I would comment that it is fixed in IRT now.

[LS_Chad]

	Quote:	brownsfan019
	So, I am asking for help of those using something other than TS for charting - if you could be so kind as to first see if your charting platform supports Volume Based Charts (aka Share Bars) and then add a volume histogram to the bottom of it and see if the volume is nice and uniform or if it is like my pic above. Please post all feedback here so we can help each other out!

brownsfan,

Here's a chart showing 500 volume bars in Investor/RT.

http://www.charthub.com/images/2008/02/06/RegressionBands_2.png



About a year ago, I changed the way our volume bars divided up the contracts. We were creating bars that were at least 500 contracts, but could exceed the 500 based on the size of the last trade that completed the bar. Now, we split the last trade up between bars if needed, so that each bar is exactly the volume called for. Theoretically, a single tick could create many bars (one tick of 2500 would result in 5 volume bars of 500).

[brownsfan019]

Thanks for the updates guys, good stuff!

Now that Open ECry also supports constant volume charts, I am content with using their charts.