A Renko Trading Strategy

25 feb

Part 1: A Brief Overview

In traditional Renko charts, time does not play a role in when a new brick is printed; bricks are purely based on price movement reaching a specified threshold. However, some variations and adaptations of Renko charts integrate time or other criteria to align more closely with certain trading strategies or preferences.

Tradingview combines elements of time-based filtering with the price movement criteria of standard Renko charts. By allowing someone to set not only the size of the brick (representing the minimum price movement required to print a new brick) but also the length of time the price must remain beyond this threshold to validate the brick, this approach introduces a hybrid element to the construction of Renko charts.

This modification can help to filter out even more noise by ensuring that only price movements that are sustained for the specified period contribute to the formation of the chart. It could be particularly useful for traders looking to avoid false signals that might result from brief, sharp price movements that don't represent a true change in market sentiment.

Incorporating time into Renko charts can make them somewhat more similar to traditional time-based charting methods, providing a hybrid that retains the noise-filtering benefits of Renko while adding an extra layer of confirmation to the price moves. This can be a valuable tool for traders who wish to fine-tune their analysis by considering both significant price changes and the persistence of these changes over time.

The size of the brick in Renko charts directly influences the chart's sensitivity to price changes, and as a consequence, it indirectly affects its sensitivity to time as well, although time is not explicitly considered in traditional Renko chart construction.

A larger brick size makes the chart less sensitive to price movements. This is because a larger price change is required to add a new brick to the chart, which can lead to fewer bricks being printed over a given period. This reduction in sensitivity means that minor price fluctuations are effectively filtered out, highlighting more significant trends. Consequently, when you use a larger brick size, the chart might appear similar across different time frames because only substantial price movements are recorded, and these are less frequent.

With WTI s an example, setting the brick size to 25 ticks filters out all price movements that are smaller than this. Whether you're looking at a 1-minute or an 11-minute timeframe, the chart will only update when the price moves by 25 ticks or more from the last brick. If the market is relatively stable or if price changes are within this 25-tick range, the Renko chart will remain unchanged, making the chart appear similar across these different time observations.

This characteristic of Renko charts makes them particularly useful for identifying and trading based on longer-term trends, as it diminishes the impact of short-term volatility and noise. The choice of brick size is a fundamental decision for traders using Renko charts, as it needs to balance the desire to filter out insignificant price movements with the need to capture meaningful market moves timely.

Part 2: Devising a Strategy with Renko
to follow