Point And Figure bars

[roonius]

Does not look right. I believe these types of bars should not pay attention to session times.
In the attached picture 8tick box was used and 3 box reversal.
Looks bad as you can see.

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

That's debatable. All of our bar implementations are reset at session boundaries. The downside of not doing this is that the chart will always look different depending on when your starting point is.

[roonius]

That's debatable. All of our bar implementations are reset at session boundaries. The downside of not doing this is that the chart will always look different depending on when your starting point is.

I agree - it's debatable. It would be nice for user have an option in this case:
Reset at new session - true/false.

Thanks

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

I agree - it's debatable. It would be nice for user have an option in this case:
Reset at new session - true/false.

Thanks

Considered that and could be an option in the future.

[MicroAl]

Point and Figure

I have just noticed the picture showing your point and figure implementation while browsing this thread.

I have used point and figure extensively and seem implementations in various software packages.

I have never seen an implementation such as this. IMHO I believe that if Ninja is released with this implementation it will not help your product reputation.

Ninja is an excellent product and Ninja 7 looks as if it is really going to be a competition beater. However I fear an implementation such as this will really help your competitors.

Perhaps other users of Point and Figure could comment on this further

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

I have just noticed the picture showing your point and figure implementation while browsing this thread.

I have used point and figure extensively and seem implementations in various software packages.

I have never seen an implementation such as this. IMHO I believe that if Ninja is released with this implementation it will not help your product reputation.

Ninja is an excellent product and Ninja 7 looks as if it is really going to be a competition beater. However I fear an implementation such as this will really help your competitors.

Perhaps other users of Point and Figure could comment on this further

Thanks for your comments and as we roll out beta, I would love to hear more opinions.

For clarification...You then think its acceptable that you would get a completely different PnF chart as your starting point is different?

[johannes]

Thanks for your comments and as we roll out beta, I would love to hear more opinions.

For clarification...You then think its acceptable that you would get a completely different PnF chart as your starting point is different?

I'm also a big user of PnF charts and this one is realy unusable!

And the charts won't differ so much if you start at another point in time, that’s where you have the box-size for!

If at 9/9 12:00 one data source says $62.25 and one says no at 12:00 it's $62.50 and you have a box size of $0.75 the chart will probably look the same.

How to start building a 1 minute box chart, take the start minute and value and draw a box "x" or "0" doesn't matter what. And from this point on you only take the value at the end of the NEXT 1 minute (tick, 5 minutes or hour) and if it's higher you draw multiple "x" boxes till that height and if it's lower (more then 3 x box size) you change column and draw all "0" boxes.
What if the market opens the next day multiple points lower (as you can see in the chart from roonius at 10/2) then you draw "0" boxes from the last day close till the low opening from the next day.

One thing seems to be not clear to you guys at Ninja Trader, TIME does NOT play any role within PnF, it's nice to see at what point in time you are on the x-axs but it plays NO role in drawing the chart! The nice thing about a PnF chart (the reason you use it) is that it's the only chart where time is removed from!

For a good reference about PnF charts I realy recommend "The Definitive Guide to Point and Figure" from Jeremy du Plessis. As I have recommend to you guys before.

I just got my invite to the beta which I my download during this week and then I can test the PnF charts personally, but I guess that the 1 box reversal charts are drawn very wrong also! But I will comment on that after I have tested it. How to draw them is also very good explained in the book from du Plessis (it can be considered as the bible of PnF). Also I guess you have not implemented the PnF tools and indicators as described in that book. Investor/RT has implemented all tools and indicators as described in that book, it is the most complete software tool of PnF at this moment (and you guys should become that :-), go for it!).

So I would like to say, first fix the problem above, and then we will go further about the things that should be changed / added at least to make it usable, and later on we can look if you guys find it interested to make it exotic with multiple indicators and options.

Success!

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

I'm also a big user of PnF charts and this one is realy unusable!

And the charts won't differ so much if you start at another point in time, that’s where you have the box-size for!

If at 9/9 12:00 one data source says $62.25 and one says no at 12:00 it's $62.50 and you have a box size of $0.75 the chart will probably look the same.

How to start building a 1 minute box chart, take the start minute and value and draw a box "x" or "0" doesn't matter what. And from this point on you only take the value at the end of the NEXT 1 minute (tick, 5 minutes or hour) and if it's higher you draw multiple "x" boxes till that height and if it's lower (more then 3 x box size) you change column and draw all "0" boxes.
What if the market opens the next day multiple points lower (as you can see in the chart from roonius at 10/2) then you draw "0" boxes from the last day close till the low opening from the next day.

One thing seems to be not clear to you guys at Ninja Trader, TIME does NOT play any role within PnF, it's nice to see at what point in time you are on the x-axs but it plays NO role in drawing the chart! The nice thing about a PnF chart (the reason you use it) is that it's the only chart where time is removed from!

For a good reference about PnF charts I realy recommend "The Definitive Guide to Point and Figure" from Jeremy du Plessis. As I have recommend to you guys before.

I just got my invite to the beta which I my download during this week and then I can test the PnF charts personally, but I guess that the 1 box reversal charts are drawn very wrong also! But I will comment on that after I have tested it. How to draw them is also very good explained in the book from du Plessis (it can be considered as the bible of PnF). Also I guess you have not implemented the PnF tools and indicators as described in that book. Investor/RT has implemented all tools and indicators as described in that book, it is the most complete software tool of PnF at this moment (and you guys should become that :-), go for it!).

So I would like to say, first fix the problem above, and then we will go further about the things that should be changed / added at least to make it usable, and later on we can look if you guys find it interested to make it exotic with multiple indicators and options.

Success!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. For sure we understand that time does not play a role in PnF charts however, an initial decision was made to stay consistent with our other chart types to ensure that charts always look the same independent of start time. Historically, users have overwhelmingly voiced their opinion when we provided time independent charts such as tick, volume and range. Indicator values would look different from one day to the next, trading systems would historically generate different signals, users comparing charts would look different etc... In any case, I am not arguing that we are right, just providing insight as to why the initial decision was made.

Again, I thank you for voicing your concern and I will await further before deciding the best course of action.

[johannes]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. For sure we understand that time does not play a role in PnF charts however, an initial decision was made to stay consistent with our other chart types to ensure that charts always look the same independent of start time. Historically, users have overwhelmingly voiced their opinion when we provided time independent charts such as tick, volume and range. Indicator values would look different from one day to the next, trading systems would historically generate different signals, users comparing charts would look different etc... In any case, I am not arguing that we are right, just providing insight as to why the initial decision was made.

Again, I thank you for voicing your concern and I will await further before deciding the best course of action.

Thanks for your response. Your point of view is very clear to me at this point.

Personally I only use 1 minute PnF charts when the software package can't handle tick charts. Normally I will use the Tick charts and Day charts, so if both of these are created the right way for the 1 box reversal, 3 box reversal and 5 box reversal then I am very happy! But when I get access to the beta this week (I got the email)I will go and test and will give my response.

So going to the scientific / philosophic point of view:
Yes I can see your reasoning, and Yes it has some things that you can say nice option! But when I look to the theory of PnF then I ask myself is it also usable?
Disadvantages:
- The 45 angle trend lines won't work, so saying what the trend within the chart is will be more difficult (if it's even possible...).
- Making horizontal counts for price target projections are not correct anymore...
- vertical counts are probably still valid for price target projections if you do a little bit more calculations.
Advantages:
...I am still not sure...but I will give it some thoughts and will come back to this...

Just my thoughts, come back to you later after testing.

[MicroAl]

Point and Figure

Agree with everything Johannes has said. All the books I have read on Point and Figure are quite clear in that a new column is only started when there is a reversal which will fill a certain no of boxes ie reversal box size etc.

I have three other software packages which do point and figure. Two British and One US. The US one has implemented point and figure the way you have, so I can understand how the mistake has been made.

A major point as Johannes has said is that point and figure allows you to produce price targets using horizontal counts and also 45 degree lines as trend lines. This will all be negated if you implement your point and figure as planned.

I am very pleased that you are intending to implement this feature and spending time aiming to get it correct, as point and figure charting will enable you to attract a whole new customer base to your product

[jdfagan]

Use a flag to let us decide behavior at session boundary

I believe Roonius' suggestion is best in this case - allowing for a new flag to control behavior of non-time based charts at session boundaries:

Reset at new session - true/false

This would allow the end user to decide on his choice for behavior at session boundaries.

Personally, I think that non-time based charts should not be reset on session boundaries (as was done in 6.5). Yes, starting time would make a difference but am ok with this and its expected when you understand these types of non-time based charts. Time really shouldn't impact the drawing of these extra bars on a daily basis. Doing so extends/adds new bars unnecessarily IMO and results in less clean indicators.

JD

[johannes]

Okay, I had promised to come back to help you make the PnF charts usable. And in my humble opinion they are not usable at this moment, I have no idea what you can do with them at this moment, but that doesn't matter because they are still in beta.

I have got the beta and I am testing it, it took me a few minutes till I found how to setup a PnF charts, after I found it I say yes logical, but if you don't know it you have to search it for a few minutes.

BTW my data source is Interactive Brokers.

And there are multiple problems I would like to address after playing with it, so I will number them so we can discuss them.

1) The Box size is of the type Int32, where it should be of type Double, because I would like to adjust it to multiples of the tick (pip) size of the underlying instrument. Like for ES I would like to set it for day trading to .25 .50 .75 1, this way I can only set it to 1 which is to big!

2) I set up a tick chart for the ES12-09 future as you can see in the screenshot http://i34.tinypic.com/6ojrx3.png and I only get one "x" box as you can see in the right upper top. What am I doing wrong, or what is going wrong? Because I would like to see all 19 points translated into boxes because that’s the change in value the ES has done today.

3) Because Interactive Brokers only delivers Tick data for a few days it is impossible to make a historical PnF sheet from 2 years of Tick data (I don't know if NT 7 can handle this?) So you need to make a 1 minute PnF sheet (I would use it with the settings box size 5 and reversal 3), I you would do this you get the following chart http://i35.tinypic.com/24g7eqp.png, and you can't do anything with it because each session the drawing is restarted as stated in the opening post! So I would definitely need the option to keep drawing instead of restarting.

4) Now I used a 1 day PnF chart with 5 box size and a reversal of 3 and it looks as http://i34.tinypic.com/20hocx1.png this is really unusable, the scaling is really ugly! And the data seems even to be incorrect! Look at this chart http://i35.tinypic.com/2d8neh2.png, this one is usable, also the ES future with a box size of 5 and a reversal of 3 . The size of the Windows Vista window is the same for both, and see the difference!

5) The 1 box reversal charts are build very wrong! Because a 1 box reversal chart excepts the possibility to have a "x" and "0" box within the same column. A 1 box chart has never the height of 1 box, because in that case the next column starts exactly at the same column! It is described very well in the book I pointed you to in another message, see above. But if you would like to implement it I will be willing to scan the pages that describe the rules and email it to you, it also as examples of how it should look.

6) PnF charts use 45 degree angle lines, and the drawing tools for this don't exist! While this are the most important lines to be used within the PnF charts! On small box sizes you sometimes also use the normal trend lines, but it the charts look descent then you use always 45 degree angle lines. For a good example how those lines are drawn look at this chart http://i34.tinypic.com/21e5g6w.png a line up starts always on the right bottom, while a line down always starts at the right top of the box. Also look to the scaling at this chart, it is really wonderful! It is even better than this one http://i35.tinypic.com/2d8neh2.png It are always square boxes even if you draw a "x" or a "0" and that is how it should be, this one makes the error http://i35.tinypic.com/2d8neh2.png that it doesn't draw them in square boxes and that’s why it is very difficult to have 45 degree angle lines. It would be nice if you made the best of both worlds :-) It would be nice that when you zoom in the size of the grid lines / squares change in size on this chart http://i34.tinypic.com/21e5g6w.png



There are even two drawing tools that are needed for the PnF charts to make it easy working with, but I will discuss them after the first 6 points are fixed. The 6 points above are the minimal things that have to be fixed to make the PnF charts usable, otherwise you can better remove it from your product because nobody can do anything with it and it will only give your product a bad look. But I really hope you will manage it to make this tool a super PnF charting software! I know for sure you will get a much bigger client base! If you need info help or what so ever let me know!

And after you have fixed the 6 points and added the two extra drawing tools I haven't even discussed you can even make it more exotic, but that is a choice you will have to make, but the 6 point and the two drawing tools are really needed!

Suc6!

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

1) You can adjust to multiple of a tick since the value represents 1 tick of the underlying instrument thus, 5 would be 5 x Ticksize or 5 x Pip size etc... If this is not working as I explained, please let me know.

2) Someone else will come back to you on this.

3) IB does not provide any tick data and thus we don't support that however, the point you make here is the same one regarding continuous chart vs reset at session boundaries. If I am mistaken, please let me know.

4) Not sure if anything can be done here since this looks to be a scaling/rendering issue. I checked TradeStation and eSignal charts and compared to ours and all three are "ugly" and look more or less the same (graphically) , I am not sure how the pretty chart image you provided could be done.

I have decided not to respond to your other points for now since the general points you make are that the PnF implementation is unusable and require some further research on our part before I can provide further response.

[johannes]

1) You can adjust to multiple of a tick since the value represents 1 tick of the underlying instrument thus, 5 would be 5 x Ticksize or 5 x Pip size etc... If this is not working as I explained, please let me know.

2) Someone else will come back to you on this.

3) IB does not provide any tick data and thus we don't support that however, the point you make here is the same one regarding continuous chart vs reset at session boundaries. If I am mistaken, please let me know.

4) Not sure if anything can be done here since this looks to be a scaling/rendering issue. I checked TradeStation and eSignal charts and compared to ours and all three are "ugly" and look more or less the same (graphically) , I am not sure how the pretty chart image you provided could be done.

I have decided not to respond to your other points for now since the general points you make are that the PnF implementation is unusable and require some further research on our part before I can provide further response.

Thanks for your response Ray!

Okay,
1) This is what I had understood wrong, because normally within the PnF world when you speak about box size, it is the value in points you speak about, never about the number of ticks. A disadvantage of this is that you can't use a box size of .70, only .75 and this is not always what you want. I hope you will change it, but if you keep it this way, make sure that you write it very clear within the tips / extra info box for the parameter in the data box, because other people will make the same mistake.

3) True, in a previous post I said that if the Tick charts where usable I wouldn't bother about reset at session boundaries, but because IB doesn't deliver Tick history I need the option to have continuous charts. It was just an example about the discussion before.

4) The name of the tool I used is http://www.prorealtime.com/en/ you can use it for free with daily quotes, just open a free account and play around. Only take into consideration that they have a tool to draw angles that isn't working very well because the angles aren't correct.


I understand that you can't comment about the rest of the points immediately. I hope I didn't sound too harsh I know you guys have put a lot of effort into building it, my point is just to help you guys build a good tool that is very good usable. Why, because there aren't that much great tools around for PnF charting, most tools suck at the point of scaling as you have found out that is very difficult to accomplish on a good and usable way. Investor/RT is the leading tool within the PnF area, during your study you could also take a look at it.

I really hope you guys will go on with PnF charting and won't drop it from your tool!

[MicroAl]

Point and Figure Charts

Ray

I am sorry if you feel that you are getting a lot of grief on an enhancement to your product, which no doubt you have spent a lot of time on.

I see that you are looking at two competing products and seeing that they implement P & F in the same way as yourselves. I suspect that not many people use these products for P & F.

In the Uk Updata have a product which is used by the banks and institutions as well as having a retail product which uses Esignal as a data feed. I believe they are the acknowledged expects on Point and Figure. (One of their owners wrote The Definitive Guide to Point and Figure)
I would suggest that you look at their implementation of Point and Figure
and you will see what we are talking about.

Perhaps other traders using point and figure would like to comment on the points made in this thread.