Split Day Night Sessions & Volume Profile

Posted in CBOT Market Profile®, User Tips by tharnett on March 19, 2010

One of the most popular indicator technical indicators within MarketDelta is the Profile indicator. It can be accessed when adding a technical indicator or better yet, accessed from the chart toolbar. It is the 4th icon up from the bottom on the right side. For this blog post, I want to show how to do something that is a common request for Market Profiles, but do it on our traditional chart or Footprint chart.

Many traders like to see the overnight and day activity split apart. Using the settings below, this is now possible on charts other than Market Profiles. NOTE: The Market Profile enablement is necessary in order to use the Profile Indicator. Here is a link to a video and more information on this indicator.

Profile Indicator Split Day Night
Chart Definition

Pay special attention to the “Time per Profile” box settings. These numbers represent the number minutes defined for the overnight and day sessions.

prof_settings

More Info On Dynamic Profile Settings
The Profile Indicator has been enhanced to allow for dynamic profiling. This feature has been an option within the Market Profile charts for some time. Dynamic Profiles take two periods. The first period (minimum bars period or MPB) represents the minimum number of bars that each profile must contain. The second period (breakout period or BOP) determines the bars used to form a range which must be broken in order to start a new profile. For example, consider a dynamic profile with a MPB of 12 and a BOP of 8. Once the profile reaches 12 bars, on the 13th bar, the high and low of that 13th bar will be compared to the highest high and lowest low of the previous 8 bars. If that 13th bar breaks out of the range of the previous 8 bars on the high or low side (or both), then that 13th bar becomes the first bar of the new profile. If it does not break out of that range, it becomes part of the current profile, and then the high and low of the 14th bar are tested to see if they broke out of the range of the previous 8 bars, and so on.

There are a couple of advantages to the Profile Indicator implementation of dynamic profiles over that within the Market Profile charts. The Profile Indicator can build off any periodicity, not just time-based periodicities. Therefore, the dynamic profiles can be built on top of volume bars, range bars, tick bars, Renko bars, or point and figure bars. In addition, The Profile Indicator can be access in the RTL language with the PROF token, allowing users to access historical data values such as the POC, Value Area High, Value Area Low, and so forth. A new result has also been added to the PROF token titled “Avg POC” which allows the to specify a period and chart the average POC over the past X profiles historically.

We are hiring!

Posted in Footprint® Chart by tharnett on March 16, 2010

We are hiring again and looking for an individual who wants to work close to where they live, work in a brand spankin’ new office overlooking a river, and join a team of motivated individuals in a relaxed, casual atmosphere. If this is you or someone you might know we would love to hear from you. The position requires excellent technical, troubleshooting, and communication skills. See this link with more details about the position and where to send the resume. http://www.marketdelta.com/Jobs

Backup – Best Practices

Posted in User Tips by tharnett on March 2, 2010

Recently I had the experience of talking with a customer who had uninstalled and then reinstalled MarketDelta. They were under the impression that the default database backup folder located at C:Program FilesMktDeltaData_fBackup_f would not be deleted if they uninstalled. Unfortunately this is not the case and when the software is uninstalled, ALL data, charts, settings, and program files go away. Needless to say the user was not happy to find out everything was gone after putting hours and hours into building his charts and layouts.

Because of this, it made sense to publish some “best practices” for managing your personal settings. Keep in mind that unless you are storing lots and lots of tick data, it is easy to just re-download the historical data that may be lost in the event of a crash or uninstall. Most of the data vendors that MarketDelta supports provide plenty of data to get you back up and running quickly so that you hardly miss a trade.

Best Practice #1 – Save Chart and Layout Definition Files
Chart definitions and layout definitions are files that contain all the specific details of a particular chart or layout. They are text (.txt) files. They can be easily stored, shared, named, exported, and imported. Many people post charts to www.charthub.com and share the definition of the file they posted. In fact, this is a very good step 1. Share your charts up to charthub.com and give them a name (maybe your initials) that you can easily search on if needed at a later time. I know we have users who have hundreds of charts stored on the site.

Alternatively, you can File | Export | Chart Definition and save the file OUTSIDE the Mktdleta folder. Save them to My Documents or to a USB drive. Maybe even email them to yourself. You can do the same with your layout definitions. These contain all the charts in a particular layout. The point is to do this from time to time if you make significant changes to your charts. Otherwise, just doing it once after building your charts should be adequate.

Best Practice #2 – Specify the Backup_f to Save Elsewhere
By default the database backup file is stored inside the MktDelta folder in Program Files (C:Program Filesmktdeltadata_f) for Windows XP, or C:UsersYourNamemktdelta for Vista and Windows 7 users. This archive contains ALL your settings, data, and charts within the software. Some users will even make a backup of the backup and just archive it somewhere in case the whole hard drive where to go out.
It is easy to change the backup location to be somewhere outside the MktDelta folder. To change the file path do the following:

  • Click Setup | Preferences | Backup
  • Specify a backup location. Try C:Backup. You may need to create this folder or you could use an existing location you back up data to.
  • Click OK and the initiate a backup. Press ALT+B to initiate the backup.

    • For more detailed information on backup and recovery, see the Knowledge Base and search “backup”.