Everything you wanted to know about REPAINTING and were afraid to ask
ZigZags, Swings, Waves, Reversals, and Pivots are all repainting indicators. The plots shown are the chart are painted long afterwards, when the final pattern is formed. Any current plots are just a guess because the final pattern cannot be determined until the current candle is long past.
Repainting is when an indicator triggers (prints an arrow, shows up on a scan/watchlist, sends an alert, buy & sells on back testing, etc) because at that moment it is at a High or Low. But as the price goes down (or up), it erases that signal and puts the high/low signal on the next candle. And so on and on. Showing no history of the many false signals. It only leaves the one perfect high/low signal, long after the trend has finished.
The Negative: Repainting is problematic especially for newer traders. Many of these indicators provide triggers promising that a stock has hit a low (or high) and is indicating NOW NOW NOW is the time to make entry and it can be right, reinforcing their belief that this is a good strategy. But it can also be wrong, it erases that signal, continues to drop like a rock, and crushes previous profits. Just the potential of that possibility causes traders to lack confidence, to leave trades early at the smallest sign of trouble, creating a feedback loop of ever-smaller profits and ever-larger losses.
No, repainting indicators can not be rewritten to not repaint. Repainting is part of their DNA.
Positive Side of these Indicators:
If you look at a script and if there is a fold operation using highest and/or lowest that is the indication that it repaints.
Fold is a recursive operation that keeps redefining the highest and lowest and redrawing them.
Generally, if you have an indicator that shows buy and sell signals on your chart and every single signal works out perfectly, such as: Trend Reversals, Zigzags, Swing High, Swing Low, COG, Hurst indicators, some Pivot Points, etc... then most likely that indicator repaints. Looks great for backtesting because all the false signals and bad buy/sells are erased.
Multi-Timeframe REPAINTING-type Behavior
Other REPAINTING-type Behavior:
In TOS, an indicator can be triggered and signal prematurely during the formation of a candle because the conditions are met but the signal can disappear by the close of the candle if the conditions for the signal do not hold true. A workaround would be to be scan/alert/paint the arrow on the prior candle and/or do not trigger your scan/watchlist/alert/arrow/signal based on just one study. This holds true for reducing many types of false signals.
This information was compiled from the various posts written about repainting. A search of this forum will provide the detail from which these statements were derived.
HTH
ZigZags, Swings, Waves, Reversals, and Pivots are all repainting indicators. The plots shown are the chart are painted long afterwards, when the final pattern is formed. Any current plots are just a guess because the final pattern cannot be determined until the current candle is long past.
Repainting is when an indicator triggers (prints an arrow, shows up on a scan/watchlist, sends an alert, buy & sells on back testing, etc) because at that moment it is at a High or Low. But as the price goes down (or up), it erases that signal and puts the high/low signal on the next candle. And so on and on. Showing no history of the many false signals. It only leaves the one perfect high/low signal, long after the trend has finished.
The Negative: Repainting is problematic especially for newer traders. Many of these indicators provide triggers promising that a stock has hit a low (or high) and is indicating NOW NOW NOW is the time to make entry and it can be right, reinforcing their belief that this is a good strategy. But it can also be wrong, it erases that signal, continues to drop like a rock, and crushes previous profits. Just the potential of that possibility causes traders to lack confidence, to leave trades early at the smallest sign of trouble, creating a feedback loop of ever-smaller profits and ever-larger losses.
No, repainting indicators can not be rewritten to not repaint. Repainting is part of their DNA.
Positive Side of these Indicators:
- Savvy scalpers, who are also using other strategic elements and have expertise in reading price action /candle patterns are known to make use of some repainting indicators because they trigger MUCH faster than the non-repainting. They factor the cost of losses due to phantom signals into their strategy.
- Swing Traders and Scalpers will sometimes use these indicators to analyze overall trendlines as opposed to looking for specific entry or exit. The caveat being that even if the point is many many candles past is can STILL REPAINT, the trendline can go from up to down based on new data points. But this is true even when drawing manual trendlines. So I can see the use for utilizing these types of indicators to get a general idea of historical trends.
If you look at a script and if there is a fold operation using highest and/or lowest that is the indication that it repaints.
Fold is a recursive operation that keeps redefining the highest and lowest and redrawing them.
Generally, if you have an indicator that shows buy and sell signals on your chart and every single signal works out perfectly, such as: Trend Reversals, Zigzags, Swing High, Swing Low, COG, Hurst indicators, some Pivot Points, etc... then most likely that indicator repaints. Looks great for backtesting because all the false signals and bad buy/sells are erased.
Multi-Timeframe REPAINTING-type Behavior
Other REPAINTING-type Behavior:
In TOS, an indicator can be triggered and signal prematurely during the formation of a candle because the conditions are met but the signal can disappear by the close of the candle if the conditions for the signal do not hold true. A workaround would be to be scan/alert/paint the arrow on the prior candle and/or do not trigger your scan/watchlist/alert/arrow/signal based on just one study. This holds true for reducing many types of false signals.
This information was compiled from the various posts written about repainting. A search of this forum will provide the detail from which these statements were derived.
HTH
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