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 in terms of box sizes:
- 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.
Standard Renko vs Time-accurate Renko
You can use the Quantum Renko indicator for TradingView in 2 different ways.
Standard
When applied, the Quantum Live Renko Charts indicator appears below the main chart and creates a renko chart representation of the time-based chart above. Please note that in Standard mode, and since renko charts are devoid of time, the time x-axis of the chart does not apply to the renko chart displayed. Right off the bat, the indicator takes the time-based chart above and calculates the best box size that matches the current timeframe then uses it to create the renko bars below. The computed box size is displayed at the label located at the top-left side of the panel. It can also accept a fixed box size by entering it in the indicator’s Fixed Box Size input as discussed above.
Time-accurate
The renko chart is a powerful approach to adopt as an intra-day trader, as it smooths out the price action into a series of blocks or steps, and so delivers a uniform chart which is easy to analyse. And of course, being a non time-based chart, it reveals momentum as the price action speeds up and slows down which is invaluable when scalping. However, there is a problem. As it is a non time-based chart it can be tricky to align this with a time based chart as the two are not synchronised. So, where a trader is running the renko alongside a time-based chart using one to analyse the other and vice versa, it is almost impossible to align the two correctly. This is even more significant when using indicators on the time-based chart such as volume, third party proprietary indicators or those which are freely available. So, what’s the answer?
The Time-accurate renko indicator solves the issue instantly. It is unique and as far as we know nobody has developed such an indicator to provide a solution to this problem. So how does it work? And as you might expect the answer is all in the name. We call it the Time-accurate renko indicator because that’s what it is. In simple terms it aligns the bricks it builds with the time-based chart above. So where for example the time-based price action moves into congestion, so does the time accurate renko and will build a horizontal wall of bricks at that level until the price action breaks away, at which point the Time-accurate renko begins building in the normal way with bricks which rise or fall with the trend. What the chart then delivers is a wonderful picture of clear levels of support and resistance as you might see when a brick wall is under construction, helping traders to establish breakaway price action which all the time is mirrored on the time-based chart with the chosen indicators. What makes the Time-accurate renko even more powerful is the option to select either your own choice of brick size or alternatively the optimised version which means you are trading in harmony with the market. The optimal setting is derived from calculations based on average true range and delivers the perfect brick size for all markets, timeframes and session times, so there is no more guesswork. The indicator does it all for you. However, if you prefer to set your own brick size this is available also.
And the best news of all, is that the Time-accurate renko is included with the Standard renko, so you have two indicators for the price of one and can switch from one to the other at any time or perhaps run both. The choice is yours with this unique combination of renko indicators.
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:
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.
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 Live Renko C 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 purchase the indicator 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.
Standard Renko Look Back
This is the number of bars the indicator processes from the host chart’s bar history to convert to Renko bars. This input only applies when the indicator is in Time Accurate Mode and please be advised that increasing this setting may consume more resources.
Time Accurate Mode
Set this input’s value to true to enable this mode. When false, the indicator reverts to the Standard renko mode. In Time-accurate mode, the renko bricks move in sync with the current price action above in the time-based chart. This means that the chart moves up or down only when price exceeds the current box size, otherwise, it repeats the last brick forming a horizontal wall at congestion. Each renko brick is formed at the same interval as the current timeframe which is why it is called Time-accurate.
ATR Period
Determines the number of bars the indicator will process to calculate the average true range for calculating the optimised box size. Please note that the host chart’s current timeframe is used to calculate the box size.
Fixed Box Size
You can assign a static box size when creating a renko chart. You can do this by assigning a value to this input. If its value is 0 then the indicator reverts to calculating the best box size based on the ATR Period input.
Use Instrument Point Size
The Live Renko Charts indicator may express its box size in terms of Price or Point size.
When this input is false – the box size is expressed in Price
When this input is true – the box size is expressed in Point Size or the symbol’s the smallest decimal quoted.
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 Standalone Chart
The Live Renko Charts indicator takes advantage of MT5’s 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 input to true. This will display a special button that opens the custom symbol chart. The standalone chart supports both the standard renko mode and time-accurate mode.
Standalone Chart Suffix
The Standalone Chart Suffix is a string that 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.
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 Standalone Chart field.
Step 4: Change the value of the Enable Standalone Chart field to true. You can also set here the other options to customize the indicator. Once done, click OK to confirm.
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 based on the host chart’s current timeframe. 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.
