borch084 

Hello, I'm new to trading with Tick Charts. I scalp following PATs trading channel on YouTube and I've noticed that his 2000 tick data is different from my 2000 tick data. So much so, that the signal bars and setups are often completely different. He uses NinjaTrader (unsure of data source) and I use Tradovate which uses CQG data. Is this discrepency normal? If so, I don't see the benefit in Tick Charts as it seems you would want to trade the same chart everyone else is trading...seems like using the 1 minute time frame would be more useful. That said, I do like how Tick Charts react to the volume (transactions). Anyway, just curious. I'm new to the forum and appreciate the wealth of knowledge available here. Thank you. Justin

Not totally sure, but it could possibly be that one or both of the data providers use aggregated data instead of true Ticks.

I started trading futures using TICK data, but have since moved to UniRenko charts in that (IMO) they show Momentum better since each new candle is drawn after Price moves by the chosen amount.

Hope this helps in some way.

Steve R.

Hulk 

Tick charts are created from time and sales data. Each record in the time and sales data is a "tick". So if you are aggregating 2000 ticks to create an OHLC bar, technically they should not be different. But, they may be for the following reasons: The data provider is conflating time and sales. Conflation is a process employed by some data providers where if there are too many trades in a certain time period, they are merged into one before being disseminated. This is the most likely reason for tick charts being different. Your platform has a bug. Upon startup, the historical "tick" data it queries is not an exact replica of real-time - its either out of sequence, incomplete (with gaps) or is conflated. Also upon startup, the platform needs to merge the historical stream with real-time and it may not do that correctly. This is an unlikely reason for tick charts being different. There could be other reasons but the most likely one is conflation.

Im going off point but to have some fun...you just made me go look up Conflate...thank you for the literary experience
Kudos..... learn 3 new things a day

I search this out one time and had the same problem as you. I use Macks style and would take a trade look later that night to study the trade that failed and found out my signal bar was a bad one meaning a bear bar and I took a long. I stated taking pictures and reloaded my hist data constantly to make sure I had the correct picture. I found out the swings don't change but the candle open and close will. I wrote ninja trader and found out you have to live with it. I now use tick and time charts together for this reason. Volume charts will have the same result. I hope this helps.

Below is a reply from Ninja Trader when I will searching for answers.

As ticks come into NinjaTrader in real-time, they are time stamped based on your local PC time if they do not already have an associated time stamp that is provided from the real-time data source. The majority of our supported brokerage feeds DO NOT time stamp ticks, where most of our supported market data vendor feeds do provide time stamped ticks. NinjaTrader then builds bars based on the time stamp of the incoming tick and displays these bars in your chart in real-time.


Let's say you have a tick (tick "A") with a time stamp of 10:31:00 AM which gets packaged into the 10:32:00 AM bar and happens to be the high of that bar. An hour later, you reload historical data from your historical data provider into NinjaTrader. This process will overwrite the existing data. The 10:32:00 AM bar now looks different since the high made by TICK "A" is now part of the prior bar, 10:31:00 AM. How is this possible?



• Your PC clock could have been off so the time stamp is delayed


• Your internet may have been lagging so the tick came in slightly delayed and therefore the time stamp is delayed


• Due to standard latency, even 50ms delay (which is normal) could be the difference between a 10:30:59 and 10:31:00 time stamp


• There is no way of knowing how the historical data provider packages their bars


The only way to ensure that data always looks the same is if every connectivity provider sent ticks with time stamps AND that all vendors synchronized on time stamps. Unfortunately, this is just not a reality nor plausible scenario.

Here is the link again for your reference, this information is located under the Understanding why a chart can look different after reloading historical data from the server:

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt7/how_bars_are_built.htm

I just looked at my 377 volume chart for CL futures from yesterday, over the 90 minute time frame I usually trade
the chart I am looking at on Saturday morning shows 6 setups from Friday,
I printed out a picture of my chart with entries yesterday morning,after I finished trading, I also had 6 entries yesterday
however, 2 are actually different on the current chart then were yesterday. In other words if the chart I am looking at currently was the same chart I was trading from yesterday , I would not have taken 1 losing entry and would have taken 1 winning entry, for a net difference of $160 per contract in my favor. The chart I traded from yesterday made me take a loser and miss a winner when compared to the current 377 volume chart I am looking at. This usually happens the majority of trading days, This is a big problem. But if this were not so I would imagine that the algorithms would take over and make it even more difficult to profit ?

mercrastius 

This is an extremely interesting thread - I also follow PATs methodology, and have been watching Mack's videos religiously. Lately this topic has come up quite a bit, but I don't think there's been a satisfactory explanation. But I don't think there NEEDS to be one, it's more of a preference thing - if you watch Mack's videos & your charts don't match you're not getting the most out of the videos. But it's not a huge deal in the big picture. (...) Anyway I kind of did a deep dive on this, and took some screenshots of a recent Mack's video & compared to mine. It's odd, but it seems like the day always starts off with our charts perfectly in sync (mine & his). But at some point they stop lining up, sometimes soon after the day session open and sometimes a little later. For reference, I use Sierracharts with CQG data. I'm with AMP if that matters also. I start my session time at 16:30:00 and start a new bar at the session start. (...) I've noticed this is the pattern - early in his trade review videos my CQG/Sierra charts match Mack's bar-for-bar. But there's always a point at which they diverge. I'd love an answer to this, if anyone's got an idea. Thanks, Merc

I also follow PATs methodology and compared my chart (NT8 Continuum demo) with Mack's chart and mack viewer ToS chart and I've got 3 different tick charts !

As previously said I guess it doesn't matter and we should trade what we see in our screen.

sraman 

... if you are in a bullish trade and you get a bearish candle at or around the top of the trend, ...

Uhhh how do you know that is the top of the trend except after the fact?

SunTrader 

Uhhh how do you know that is the top of the trend except after the fact?

You look for a bearish candle on the upper side of the trend. Strong bearish candles include Shooting star, tombstone Doji, bearish engulfing, evening star, hanging man, bearish harami, and so on. You can take a bearish trade below (by a certain amount) any of these candles. Of course nothing is 100% guaranteed but it works majority of times.

Similarly, if the price movement is downward. Look for a strong bullish candle for upward reversal. Strong bullish candles include hammer, inverted hammer, dragonfly doji, bullish engulfing, morning star, and also bullish harami.

sraman 

... Of course nothing is 100% guaranteed but it works majority of times...

Do you have testing stats backing that up or just your opinion?

BTW I do look at candle patterns (I know them all), with many other factors. But never alone.

SunTrader 

Do you have testing stats backing that up or just your opinion? BTW I do look at candle patterns (I know them all), with many other factors. But never alone.

I also do look for other factor along with candle pattern. If you look at the image of my original reply post, you will see some markings on the charts that includes bubbles and blue and red horizontal lines. Those are my indicators I have developed and implemented for visual representation. Yes, I do have stats. For example, signals with b+++ or b--- bubble marks have over 90% success rate. Similarly, I do have stats for my other signals. I also have target ranges for my different signals such that I estimate where to get out of the trade.

sraman 

I also do look for other factor along with candle pattern. If you look at the image of my original reply post, you will see some markings on the charts that includes bubbles and blue and red horizontal lines. Those are my indicators I have developed and implemented for visual representation. Yes, I do have stats. For example, signals with b+++ or b--- bubble marks have over 90% success rate. Similarly, I do have stats for my other signals. I also have target ranges for my different signals such that I estimate where to get out of the trade.

What symbol and timeframe is that chart?

I never understand posting a chart without those details but it is fairly common.