Dumb Renko Question... or maybe not?

[Darth Tradicus]

Was wondering if there was any legitimate purpose to the way TOS sets box starting points.

For example a .20 tick/cent Renko you'd think 100.00 - 100.20 - 100.40 - 100.60 - 100.80 etc. It shouldn't ever have to change, right?

But oftentimes its 100.02 - 100.22 - 100.42 etc or 100.12 - 100.32 etc

So is there an actual good reason for this, or is TOS just really annoying when it comes to just about everything Renko? It just changes sporadically and its a bit aggravating because it screws up any backtesting you want to do because everything changes shape- boxes and signals no longer appear where boxes and signals once were.

 

[Joshua]

It appears to be dependent on the opening price of the chart's first bar, which then gets dropped and replaced eventually relative to the length of historical data you've selected.

 

[Darth Tradicus]

It appears to be dependent on the opening price of the chart's first bar, which then gets dropped and replaced eventually relative to the length of historical data you've selected.

Yeah thats kind of weird it eventually changes- seems like if its set to the opening chart price it should be different every day as the first day of your time period continually moves forward... but that doesn't seem to be the case since many days there are no changes...

Do you know if these shifts are typical on various platforms? It doesn't seem like the kind of variable TOS would let you fix/alter... wish there was a way.

 

[Joshua]

On closer inspection, it actually seems that its based on the opening print at the max-available daily date range. That, so far, has held true for all of the symbols that I bothered to check. Not that it really matters, there isn't anything that can be done about it. The other platforms I checked also shift the price relative to what ever their starting points are, so yeah, I'd say its typical. They aren't consistent to one another either.

 

[Darth Tradicus]

On closer inspection, it actually seems that its based on the opening print at the max-available daily date range. That, so far, has held true for all of the symbols that I bothered to check. Not that it really matters, there isn't anything that can be done about it. The other platforms I checked also shift the price relative to what ever their starting points are, so yeah, I'd say its typical. They aren't consistent to one another either.

I wonder if that could be changed by using a Renko overlay indicator on a time based chart...

I looked for one here a while back but didn't see one, do you know of any?

 

[Joshua]

Not that I've heard of. Its not quite impossible to do, but I can tell you for certain that it would be extremely impractical.

 

[Darth Tradicus]

Thought I would pop back in here and mention a few things about RENKO that I'm learning that I haven't seen anywhere else and might be helpful for some to know when deciding to trade it.

The fact that it constantly alters the price at which the box closes already makes it difficult to accurately backtest. I had hopes that even though this shift occurred, backtesting could still be trusted as the overall principles should remain the same (some entries would be better, some worse, balancing out)

But now anyone playing with RENKO reading this should know that backtesting is completely worthless. As it turns out, TOS deletes time data on RENKO (the time recorded when each new box opens) after about two weeks. I knew about this, but what I didn't know was that it also completely repaints the charts. Charts that were choppy turn into beautiful smooth ups and downs that seem wonderfully tradeable- false. I've only been able to recognize this after live trading for more than two weeks and recording my trade data on the indicator I'm using. Its one thing when an indicator repaints, but when the chart itself repaints it's completely useless for all indicators.