ToS Range Bars Question

[mark.917]

My experience with Range Bars is that the next bar opens a minimum of 1 tick value above or below the previous bar high/low (ie the set range gets exceeded). Using ToS range bars, they open at the same value that the previous bar closed at. How/why is that? On a 1 point / 4 tick range bar, if it traded in that range all day there would be only 1 bar (extreme example). Price would have to exceed that 1 point range for a new bar to print and that open would not/could not be the same value the previous bar closed at.

What am I missing/not understanding with the ToS version of Range Bars?

 

[armybender]

I agree, it's an interesting distinction TOS makes compared to other platforms that use bars that create gaps.

I believe the TOS bars are far easier to look at than range bars that produce gaps, and what I've concluded is it's something like the difference between < and <=. In other words, your bars are a specific height, but if you had a gap plus the bar height, the gap wouldn't be accounted for.

Said another way, in your 1 point example, if a bar opens at 4000, then the next 1-point bar opens at 4001.25, that would mean the 3rd bar would have to open at 4002.50, and so on. Either that or you have to chop off a tick from each bar, so is it really a 1 point bar then?

By keeping the bar height equal to what the user specifies and making the close = open, it simplifies how you can think about your bars. The only other option would be to subtract 1 tick from each bar's height, but then we'd be complaining that our bars are only 3 ticks tall instead of 4. It's sort of like saying "each bar spanned these prices..."

Long story short, you aren't missing anything, but if you try to plot out the other alternative ways range bars can be drawn you quickly start to realize that the way TOS does it simplifies a lot of things for users, even if it's not immediately apparent.