J-S

Okay, this is obviously more difficult than I thought. Or, maybe I should say, than I had hoped! I'm going to have to take some time to digest all of this after-hours. I'm kind of getting the feeling that what I want is not possible -- indefinable by code.

Blu Ray, First, just a few comments. Believe me, I NEVER expected you or anyone else here to actually code anything for me! I just thought that someone might know of something in the universe of TS codes out there that might fit the description of what I'm looking for. I'm TRULY grateful! I wish you would have made that clear, though. The fact is, I've never (believe it or not) taken a screenshot of TS before. At first it wasn't uploading to this forum properly. Finally I tried saving the image as a jpeg instead of a bitmap file and now it seems to have worked. I just thought that a good description would be as good as an image, but I guess you feel otherwise. But again, had I known that you were actually going to attempt to code something, I would have acted differently. Also, I have no doubt that Thrunner's information is, yes, excellent, and it wasn't my intention to dismiss it. It's just that I try to trade (like, I would think, most serious traders) very rule-based, and this definition of a trend fits my rules. I'm not saying that others aren't valid -- they're just not mine. Please keep in mind that what I'm trying to do here, in labeling these trends, is to disqualify potential trades without having to take the time to actually "count" the trend -- obviously very hard to do in a fast-moving market. Anyway, the good news is that I found a perfect pic for you! As you'll see from my annotations on the actual chart, the upmove on the left does NOT constitute a trend according to my rules because the six-tick retracement prevents it from being one. The downmove on the right IS a trend, as there is no six-tick retracement. By the way, you'll notice that my bars are of a much shorter timeframe (well, volume level, actually) than the ones in your image. I suppose it doesn't really make a difference in the actual calculation, but it's certainly clearer visually when there are more bars involved. Maybe that's part of the confusion here. So, finally, here's the chart! Thanks again.

Just one more thought on this, by the way. From the still relatively little I know about TradeStation, I get the feeling that if such a thing does in fact exist, it might be in the form of a "show me" dot type-thing rather than an indicator. You know -- as in when such a trend is in place, a dot appears.

Well, thanks, but I think everyone here is getting a bit sidetracked by trying to determine what is or isn't a trend. Really, the only definition I'm interested in is the one I defined -- 4 full points on the ES in one direction (doesn't matter which) without a 6 tick retracement in the midst of that trend. That's not something I made up -- the system I'm trading has a higher probability of working by not trading a reversal of such a trend. I don't expect there to be anything with those exact parameters, of course. I was just hoping there might maybe be a code in which I could just plug in those numbers. For all I know, it's a ridiculous question. I'm still fairly new to trading, and even newer to TradeStation (I had used Sierra Chart before). Furthermore, I know NOTHING about coding! The only reason I think it might NOT be a ridiculous question is that I've already found myself amazed at what's out there, and what's possible even if not yet out there. Hope that clears things up! Thanks again.

Hi. Well, I define an uptrend, for the sake of this conversation anyway (and what I'm looking for from a code), just as I described it in that last post. I just used the word uptrend to distinguish it from the opposite -- obviously a downtrend. For that, everything would simply be the opposite -- from 1404 down to 1400. Thanks.

Ah, okay. Well, how about this. Simply the distance between the lowest low of a trend (uptrend, obviously) to the highest high. That is, let's say the ES goes from a low point of 1400.00 to a high point of 1404.00 WITHOUT ever retracing 6 ticks (say, from 1403.00 down to 1401.50, and then back up again to 1404.00). Does that help? Thanks again.

Hi Blu-Ray, Agreed, but I don't really know what to take a picture of here. Really, any strong trend would do it. You know, just a trend not really broken up by any substantial retracements.

Hi! First time poster here. I'm looking for something for TradeStation in which I can define a trend and have it tell me when one is in place. For example, let's say 4 full points in the ES (16 ticks) WITHOUT a 6-tick retracement. Does anything like that exist? Thanks.