Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Software with accurate transfer of trendlines from Higher Timeframe to Lower Timefram
I am running into the issue that trendlines drawn on a higher timeframe don't exactly end up at the highs / lows on the lower timeframe (Tradestation).
I know there is at least one charting software out there that corrects the position of the trendlines when you switch timeframes. Unfortunately I forgot the name. Does anyone know what I am talking about?
An alternative would be an indicator that automatically adjusts the trendlines when switching timeframes. I think that should be possible. As far as my recollection goes, you can read out hand drawn trendlines and timeframe in easylanguage and then programmatically move them.
P.S.: I understand that the origin of the problem is not a software bug, but just the fact that the higher timeframe doesn't contain accurate timing information about the peaks.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
IDK what software does this. But I consider myself a trendline expert, so I'd like to throw in some opinions.
Every higher timeframe (larger scale) peak is also a smaller scale peak. But the larger scale's peak bar ends on a later time than the smaller scale's peak bar, so you're right -- the software can't match them up by time alone but I suppose it could be done by looking at both time and price.
The trendlines don't match up because they're on different scales. The vertical prices (y-axis) of the anchor points is the same on both scales, but the time (x-axis) is different, that's why the two trendlines don't converge at the same price on any given bar. They're different angles. I think you just have to manually convert them. But, I have a better idea -- don't use the time (x-axis) when drawing trendlines. Just use the vertical price difference between the 2 anchor points, and project that from the 2nd anchor point. This will give you a single price, so it's not actually a line, instead it's a horizontal 'level'. I'm very very certain this is the correct way to do a trendline, but it's more appropriate to call it a trendlevel or rate-of-change prediction.
So I'm saying that trendlines as everyone knows them are actually completely wrong, they're bad/inaccurate information. So, if you do it this correct way, you'll get the same exact value on all scales, which makes sense. There's only one data stream, so different scales of that same data stream should give you the same values, otherwise that tells you you're doing something wrong. When you draw a trendline on any given scale, you're actually drawing it on the scale of the anchor points (swings), so you can't look at the trendline value at every single bar, because the bars are a smaller scale than the swings you drew the trendline on -- in general you can't apply a larger scale to a smaller scale. You can't look at a yardstick and use that to determine what's going on at a molecular scale, you can only use that yardstick to determine what's going on at the same scale of the yardstick (inches, feet, etc) or larger. You can use a smaller scale to determine what's going on at a larger scale, because the small scale builds the large scale, but you can't go the other way.
So when you draw a trendline, you get one single price. This single price is is technically one swing "bar" of time into the future. Each anchor point is basically a bar on the scale of the swings, so it's a swing bar. You can't skip swings either, so every trendlevel's anchor points should be sequential swings, otherwise you're just making random levels. And the anchor points must also be on the same scale, you can't mix scales, otherwise, again, you're making random levels that aren't showing you what the data is telling you.
Traditionally drawn trendlines are correct on only one single bar... all trendline values on all bars will be wrong, except for the one bar that happens to be the same as the trendlevel. And the bars near that one correct bar will be kindof nearish to having a correct value. So sometimes you get away with doing trendlines the wrong way, but most of the time you don't.
If you do trendlevels, you'll find that they're at least as useful as trendlines. And, contrary to what you might think, there's no "self fulfilling prophecy" of trendlines... you might think that even though they're wrong they'll still work because alot of people use them, but that's not true, they may or may not be what everyone is doing in any given case, but since they're calculated wrong they're going to be wrong most of the time, whereas the trendlevel is showing you what the market is ACTUALLY doing, so it's always more accurate than the wrongly calculated trendlines.
I know this is totally different than what everyone thinks, but it's true. It's basic graph analysis 101, anyone with a math or statistics degree that studied graphs should also know this. But the entire trading industry doesn't seem to understand basic graph data analysis lol. There's alot of myths in the trading industry.
