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Charts and timeframes

Trading on margin can lose you more than you put in. Past results, including backtests, do not predict future results. Cloud9Trader provides tools and education, not financial advice. Read the full risk warning.

Every change in price is a tick. Busy markets can tick many times a second.

A chart groups ticks into bars (often drawn as candles), one per interval, such as 15 minutes. Each bar has four prices:

  • open: the first price in the interval
  • high: the highest
  • low: the lowest
  • close: the last

A candle’s body runs from open to close, and thin lines (wicks) reach to the high and low. A short interval shows detail and noise; a long one shows the broader trend.

A worked example

Section titled “A worked example”

In one 15-minute interval EUR/USD ticks at 1.0850, 1.0856, 1.0847, 1.0853.

  • Open 1.0850, high 1.0856, low 1.0847, close 1.0853.
  • The close is above the open, so it is a rising candle. Its range, high minus low, is 9 pips.

In Cloud9Trader

Section titled “In Cloud9Trader”

You pick the interval in Interval: when you start a backtest or a trading session, from 1 min to 1 day; the default is 15 min. An algorithm can react on every tick in onTick or once per bar in onIntervalClose. Bar prices and history are in Price Bars.

Backtests can replay Every tick or Minute data. Minute data is quicker but cannot see what happened inside each minute, so stop losses and take profits that are close to the price behave less like they would live.

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