Setup: Equi-Volume Bars and 3-D Shading

This example shows the following capabilities:

1) The candle bodies can have the 3-D color shading which makes them appear rounded like pipes.

2) The bar widths can be influenced by the bar's volume, kind of like an Equi-Volume effect. However, the genius of what has been done is to keep the bar centers equally spaced so the studies and draw tools can still be applied to the chart with the equi-volume widths.

3) Since we want some candles to be wider than others, we now permit bodies to overlap, which uses a portion of the space of the neighboring bars. All of these effects are implemented as options, so they can be enabled if you want to use them and disabled if you do not want to use them.

Click menu Setup | Charts to control the 3-D shading with a checkbox on this form for global properties.

The new options here are:

1) Show Vertical Grid in study sub-windows. and when checked the vertical grid on the chart will extend through the sub-windows below the chart where you put studies.  I like having the option checked.

2) 3-D Candlestick Body shading.... check this box to have the beautiful candles shown in the prior chart example.

The option for the variable bar width, or Equi-Volume as we are calling it, is a private chart property and set on the chart's CTRL+P property form.

Check the Bar Equi-Volume option to permit body widths to vary in size.  This option can also be used with bar charts and line charts, and will make these images have varying widths.  In the middle are spinner boxes for controlling candle construction

Have a larger Candle Maximum such as the 20 you see in the example.  If you set this smaller, then the biggest width will be narrower.  Note that the Candle Minimum Spacing in the example is a negative number, and this permits the overlapping.  If the value were 0 or a positive number, then the candle bodies would not overlap at all which might restrict Ensign being able to show the Equi-Volume effect.  The Max Width of 20 and Min Spacing of -8 seem to work quite well for the visual of Equi-Volume bars.

The Equi-Volume width is based on a 20 period exponential average of the volume.  The narrowest bar will be shown when the volume is less than 50% of the average. The next larger width is from 50% to 100% of the average.  The 3rd width is 100% to 150% of the average.  4th, 5th, and 6th larger widths are every 50% of average volume, ie 150-200, 200-250, and 250-300%.  These zones for increasingly wider bars have worked quite well to give the visual of when volume has dried up, and when there is very active volume.  The 20-bar average of the volume works equally well on tick chart, range, volume, minute, daily, weekly and monthly charts.  After a Globex session, there are always wide bars on the day session open because of increased volume.   It is typical for volume to dry up during mid-day lunch, and than have wider bars again into market close.  When you see a breakout bar with higher volume, you love it and it is very graphical fatter appearance.