If you’re trying to determine how to properly set the Renko bar sizes in TradeStation, you might be stumped by having to enter a different Brick Size and Offset for each symbol. But it’s easy to understand once you see how the relationship between the two works.
In NinjaTrader, the brick size and offset are defined in terms of minimum moves. We often use a T2O5R10 configuration in our Ninja Unirenko charts. This means we have two ticks (minimum moves) between bars, a 5-tick bar size, and 10 ticks to reverse and go the other direction. This ratio is the same even when we change symbols because the number of ticks stays the same even though the “size” of the minimum move varies by symbol.
Let’s think about movement in terms of the price axis, the Y axis on a chart. In Crude Oil Futures, the minimum move is 0.01, so 1 tick is 0.01. In Gold Futures, the minimum move is 0.1, which is the size of 1 tick in Gold.
2 ticks in CL would be 0.02, while 2 ticks in GC is 0.2.
TradeStation specifies its custom Renko parameters in terms of the y-axis (price axis) move in ticks. So in TradeStation, rather than specify the bar size as 5 ticks, we must specify it in terms of how much movement is represented by 5 ticks.
5 ticks of movement in Crude Futures is 5 x 0.01 = 0.05. So to represent 5 ticks in CL, we would specify it as 0.05 in TradeStation. 2 ticks in CL would be entered as 0.02. That would be entered in TradeStation’s Format/Symbol dialog as follows:
Note that we do not have the concept of a “reversal” value in TradeStation’s custom Renko like we have in UniRenko. We ignore the “10” reversal ticks. This works out well for the settings chosen by our instructors, because Custom Renko automatically uses 2x the bar size to determine the amount for reversals. As long as our UniRenko reversal ticks is double the Brick Size, it will automatically use the same reversal amount in TradeStation’s custom Renko.
Note that we use the 2, 5, 10 approach in NinjaTrader for most Futures markets. For equities, the numbers will vary more, and you’ll want to experiment to get the right values. Thomas describes how to visually get the correct settings at the end of his Renko Accelerator training class. Contact support for more information about this class.
For your reference, here’s a table which shows some common Future symbol tick-to-y-axis values:
