Renko is a well-known Japanese charting technique that removes time from the chart. Instead of drawing bars in constant intervals (time) as a normal chart would, a Renko chart does so only when price moves beyond a predefined amount.
In a Renko chart, a bar is created when price exceeds the previous bar’s high or low by a predefined amount or what we call the Box Size. The result is a chart with equally sized bars running up or down in 45 degree angles. Such a chart offers the following advantages:
- Effectively this filters out the noise that you would see on a normal chart, as the chart is then based solely on price action. This makes key support and resistance levels more apparent and more clearly defined. Formation of trends are also more distinct in a Renko chart as market noise has been removed delivering smoother trading opportunities as trends develop in waterfalls and steep slopes.
The MT5 platform does not offer a facility for generating Renko charts out of the box. The Quantum Trading Live Renko Charts indicator delivers the perfect chart for the intraday scalping trader, smoothly, efficiently, simply and intuitively, and brings all the advantages of Renko charts to your trading toolkit.
Live, Moving Charts
Unlike its predecessor, the MT5 platform no longer supports Offline Charts but it has recently introduced a new feature called Custom Symbols. This enables the user to create new symbols from existing ones in your terminal and opens up new possibilities for us to develop new ways to present to you other chart types such as Renko.
The Quantum Live Renko Charts indicator still generates live and ticking Renko charts, but it displays them using MT5’s candlestick chart plot. That’s not all. We have extended its feature to take advantage of Custom Symbols which allows you to create a new chart in a window of its own. Its main advantage is it allows you to add other Quantum Trading indicators and even indicators of your own to further your analysis on the Renko chart.
Dual Mode
The Quantum Live Renko Charts indicator for MT5 features two modes:
- Compute Best Box Size
- Fixed Box Size
Compute Best Box Size
Using the indicator in this mode allows you to “convert” a normal candlestick chart to a Renko bar chart by computing the best box size for a particular timeframe. This is computed by calculating the average true range (ATR) of the current symbol within a given period on a specific timeframe.
Fixed Box Size
Using the indicator in this mode allows you to set a constant box size for generating Renko bars. The box size can accept floating point numbers with a precision of up to 2 decimal places.
Settings Label
The indicator displays a label at the top right hand side of its own indicator window containing information about the parameters currently in effect. This allows you to manage all instances of the Quantum Live Renko Chart with ease. It shows the current Box size and the Mode of the indicator shown as follows:
Box Size: XX | Mode: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
We will explain these two further later in the guide.
Applying the Indicator
Open your MT5 platform and in the main menu, select View > Navigator to open the Navigator window which appears at the left hand side of your workspace.
In the Navigator window, expand the Indicators tree by clicking the “+” symbol. Find the Quantum tree and expand it by clicking the “+” once again to reveal the full list of Quantum Trading indicators.
IMPORTANT: Please keep in mind that you need to set your chart’s timeframe to M1 for the indicator to work. You can change the source timeframe in the indicator’s ATR Timeframe field found in its Inputs tab. You will be prompted to change the timeframe to M1 if you run the indicator in other timeframes.
To start using the indicator, you can click and drag QuantumLiveRenkoCharts from the Navigator to a chart or you can also double-click QuantumLiveRenkoCharts (which will then be applied to the currently selected chart). Doing either one of these will display the Custom Indicator window where you can configure all the various user settings for your Quantum Live Renko Charts. These options are grouped and can be accessed by selecting the tabs which will be discussed further in the following sections. Once you are done customizing the indicator’s options, click OK to run the indicator.
Common tab
Here you will find the basic information about the indicator such as its name, description, and version number.
Inputs tab
You can configure the indicator by changing its variables listed in this tab. We explain these shortly and for each configurable input of the Quantum JPYX below.
Colors tab
The candlestick plot of the Quantum Live Renko Charts indicator can be configured in this tab.
The only plot is the CandlestickChart which uses 3 colors: (1) whitesmoke for the wick, (2) dodgerblue for the bullish candle body and (3) red for the bearish candle body. To change the color, double-click any of the three color boxes transforming the field to a drop down menu which you can click again to select a new color. Width and style cannot be customized in candlestick plots.
Levels tab
This indicator does not use any Levels so this tab is empty.
Scale tab
This tab contains options to change the scale of how the indicator is displayed in the chart. We do not recommend changing any of the values here and suggest you leave these as shown below.
Visualization tab
The indicator’s visibility can be toggled on or off in different contexts with the options in this tab.
Dependencies tab
Please make sure that the “Allow DLL imports…” option is checked/ticked before running the indicator. This is required by all Quantum indicators to properly communicate with its accompanying DLL file. Alternatively, you can set this option globally by selecting in the main menu, Tools > Options > Expert Advisors tab and checking/ticking the “Allow DLL imports” option.
Configuring the Indicator
Let’s go back to the Inputs tab and explore the ways you can customize the settings of your Quantum Live Renko Charts.
Account Email
When running the Quantum Live Renko Charts indicator for the first time in your trading account, you need to enter the email you used to register in the Quantum Trading Indicators Enablement System – http://enable.quantumtrading.com/ as part of its verification process. You only need to do this once as the email is stored in the terminal’s global variable cache after it is entered initially. Please make sure that you enter your email correctly and exactly without any extra spaces before and after it. If you made an error, simply fill this field again to update it.
Mode
Determines the manner of calculation of the Renko bars. The indicator offers 2 modes:
- ATR Computed Best Box Size – The Renko box size is a computed value which is derived by calculating the mean of the average true range of a chart within a given period and timeframe.
- Fixed box size – The Renko box size is a fixed value. In this mode, you choose the box size and this will be used to create the bricks accordingly.
Before we go further, we define box size as the number of pips to form either a bullish or bearish Renko bar.
When ATR Computed Best Box Size mode is selected, the following inputs take in effect:
ATR Timeframe
Specifies the base timeframe of the symbol to compute the average true range from.
ATR Period
Determines the number of bars the indicator will process to calculate the average true range.
The ATR Computed Best Box Size mode allows you to “convert” a time chart to a Renko bar chart by computing the best box size for a given timeframe. The timeframe that you want to convert to a Renko bar chart can be set using the indicator’s ATR Timeframe input rather than the chart’s actual timeframe.
Round Off Box Size
When set to true, it pegs the computed best box size to a certain value by rounding it off to the nearest whole number. This makes it create more consistent Renko charts especially when using multiple instances of the indicator.
When Fixed Box Size mode is selected the following input takes in effect.
Box size
This input determines the size of the Renko bars the indicator generates.
The Fixed box size mode allows you to set a constant for generating Renko bars regardless of the timeframe.
Show Current Price Line
The indicator shows the current price of the instrument/currency pair with a gray line. You can turn this on or off by changing the value of this field.
Enable Custom Chart
The Live Renko Charts indicator takes advantage of MT5’s new feature called Custom Symbols. This allows us to create a chart dedicated to plotting our Renko bricks generated by the indicator. This is not enabled by default but you can use this feature by changing the value of this field to true. This will display a special button that opens the custom symbol chart.
Renko Chart Suffix
The Renko Chart Suffix is a string makes the name of the custom symbol unique. It is added at the end of the host chart’s name and is set to “_qtrenko” by default. If you like to use multiple instances of the Live Renko Charts indicator with the same instrument but with different settings, you can change the value of this field so the instances do not share the same custom symbol. By doing so, each instance will generate their Renko charts in their respective custom symbols with different Renko Chart Suffixes.
Renko Chart Initial Bar Count
This field determines the number of bars the indicator allots to create the Renko chart in the custom symbol. The indicator generates 500 bricks by default.
Opening the Renko Chart with MT5 Custom Symbols
The Live Renko Charts indicator has an extended feature that takes advantage of the new MT5 custom symbols to generate custom charts to plot its Renko bricks. This allows you to run other indicators in the Renko chart itself to further your analysis. Getting started is simple!
Step 1: Open the chart you like to use.
Step 3: Before clicking OK, select the Inputs tab and find the Enable Custom Chart field.
Step 4: Change the value of the Enable Custom Chart field to true. You can also set here the other options to customize the indicator. Once done, click OK to confirm.
Step 5: Make sure that the chart is in the M1 timeframe, and if not set it. The indicator is displayed in a separate panel just under the chart.
Congratulations! You have now opened a Renko chart using custom symbols with the Live Renko Charts indicator. Please take note of the following:
- Please remember that you need to keep the host chart open for the Renko chart in the other window to update in real time.
- The correct Renko chart is plotted in the custom chart’s M1 timeframe ONLY. Please do not change the custom chart’s timeframe.
Making Adjustments to the User Interface
Expanding the Indicator’s Screen Size
To expand the indicator to full size so that it fills the chart, these are the steps to follow:
- Hover your mouse pointer over the double horizontal lines marked with the red arrows above
- A small icon of two parallel lines with the words ‘click drag a border of the window’
- HOLD down the left click on your mouse, and drag these lines to the top of your chart, and release when done
- Hover your mouse over the right hand edge of the chart until a double headed arrow appears
- HOLD down the left click on your mouse, and drag the right hand edge of the chart across to the left and release when done
- Left click on the chart to make it the active window
- Left click on the zoom icon below, to expand your Quantum Live Renko Charts indicator to full size. The zoom function is shown below and is found in the standard toolbar below the top level navigation.
Removing the Indicator from the Chart
Open the chart’s Indicator List window by pressing Ctrl+I. You can also right-click the chart and select Indicator List from the context menu.
Select QuantumLiveRenkoCharts and click the Delete button then click the Close button.
