What are tick-based intervals
If you're an intraday trader and need to respond immediately to price fluctuations and capture short-term swings, with tick-based intervals you can access up to 40,000 bars and get a granular view of market changes.
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What are tick-based intervals
Unlike time-based charts, which periodically construct bars/candles in fixed blocks of time (e.g., each bar on a 30S chart represents 30 seconds), tick charts create bars based on the number of successive ticks, irrespective of the elapsed time.
A 10-tick chart, for example, shows a new bar after every 10 consecutive ticks. A recorded tick contains price, time, and volume information, and each 10-tick bar shows the opening, high, low, and closing tick prices for each set of 10 ticks. The time elapsed in a 10-tick bar could be a few seconds, a minute, an hour, or even a day. In other words, the time it takes to record 10 ticks does not impact the formation of chart bars. A bar on a tick chart closes after it contains the required number of ticks, and a new bar begins when a new tick is available after the latest bar closes. The timestamp provided for each bar represents its starting time, i.e., the time of its first recorded tick.
! Note: Tick-based bars, like other intraday bars, align with the beginning of the trading session. As such, a new bar on a tick chart will also open at the start of a session, even if the previous bar does not contain the required number of ticks.
Tick interval benefits
Tick charts provide some significant advantages.
A granular view of market activity. Since tick bars form based on a defined number of transactions, they can give a clearer view of when the market is most active or barely moving. New tick bars form more frequently during periods of high market activity. Conversely, new bars appear infrequently during periods of low market activity.
A more detailed perspective of price action, trends, and trading volume can help you make smart trading decisions. This perspective is helpful for short-term strategies like scalping, where you need to make successive small profits from numerous quick trades.
Also, this interval can provide you with enhanced visualization of trading actions during highly volatile times in the market compared to time-based charts.
Users can choose from the following options: 1T, 10T, 100T, and 1,000T. So, one can load a chart whose bars show values for each tick (1T) or a chart that displays information for 10/100/1,000 ticks per bar.
How to set up a tick-based chart
Tick-based intervals don't support the following chart types:
To use tick interval, select a supported chart type and choose a tick-based interval from the menu above the chart.
Alternatively, you can type 1T, 10T, 100T, or 1,000T on your keyboard and press "Enter."
Tick data is now available for almost all exchanges and symbols.
However, it currently doesn't support:
- Indices without volume
- Options
- Government bonds and yields with the "TVC:" prefix
- End-of-day symbols
If a chart's symbol doesn't have tick data, the tick intervals are grayed out and unavailable in the intervals menu.
! Note: Continuous futures ("1!" and "2!" symbols, e.g., CME_MINI:ES1!, CBOT_MINI:YM1!) have additional limitations aside from the number of bars. The maximum tick data length for continuous futures can only include the current and previous contracts. No data is available for earlier contracts.
Tick-based interval limitations
- Tick-based intervals are pre-set and cannot be customized
- Bar Replay and deep backtesting don't work with tick-based intervals
- Tick-based Renko, line break, Kagi, and point and figure charts aren't available yet
- Server-side alerts aren't available for tick-based intervals
- Tick-based intervals aren't present in our mobile apps yet
- Public ideas don't allow using tick-based charts
Tick interval in a nutshell
Tick-based charts form bars based on the number of transactions rather than fixed time periods, providing you with a more granular view of the market. They're particularly useful for short-term trading strategies, as they show market activity density and offer enhanced visualization during volatile periods.
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