The MarketDelta Blog

A very useful indicator that is built into MarketDelta is called the Paint Bar indicator. This indicator allows you to either paint the actual bar or background of the chart based upon a set of conditions.

The conditions used to “paint” the bar or background are defined in a scan, signal, or custom indicator. With all the powerful volume and price related studies in MarketDelta, the possibilities are almost limitless in the types of things you can “paint” upon.

In the example below I have taken the volume breakdown indicator and created a signal to plot the background based on whether the cumulative delta is positive or negative for the current session.

In terms of applying this information, you could use the cumulative delta as a confirmation for trade direction. If green, buy pullbacks, if red, sell rallies. A more aggressive way to apply the indicator would be to use a Footprint chart with the shaded paint bar background. A Footprint chart inherently provides more data than just a bar chart and will give a better idea of order flow. This means you can jump on breakouts if the order flow is present instead of waiting for pullbacks.

Here is how to do it, or just download the chart definition here.

Create the signal first. The signal is just VB>0.

Next, add the Paint Bars indicator, choose Signal, and select the signal you just created.

Choose to Paint Background.

Click “View” to update the settings or just view how the signal is setup.

Double click Volume Breakdown to see the settings for the “VB” token.

Here is the result once added to the chart.