bar countdown off by 30 seconds  [SOLVED]

Questions about MultiCharts and user contributed studies.
plaforte
Posts: 75
Joined: 16 Aug 2012
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 2 times

bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby plaforte » 11 Jul 2017

Hello,
I use MC64 version 10.0 build 13626 with TS data feed

I trade Forex multi time frames
I have a EURUSD one minute chart. The countdown may show 30 seconds and a new bar starts with a countdown of 1:30 minutes. The 30 seconds is variable it may be anywhere between 1 to 30 but I practically never see it down to 1.
I have a 5 minutes chart and it is synchronized with the 1 minute countdown.

Is this because there are seconds during which there is no trade ? I noted that a new bar is not synchronized at all with my PC clock. I trad multi time frames trading on minute charts mostly at the close of a 5 minutes bar, and in these conditions it is almost impossible as I never know when a bar is gonna close.

Thank you
Pierre

User avatar
TJ
Posts: 7740
Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Location: Global Citizen
Has thanked: 1033 times
Been thanked: 2221 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby TJ » 12 Jul 2017

How busy is the forex that you are trading?

plaforte
Posts: 75
Joined: 16 Aug 2012
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby plaforte » 13 Jul 2017

Hello TJ, I trade the EURUSD on ETX UK broker, it is busy but I can notice that seconds go by sometimes without any trade. I am in Singapore so I trade after US market hours and like around midnight EST there is very little volume but at 3pm here, London opens and still at that time there is the same problem. Today after the London open the lag was 34 seconds. It is the same for all charts that I have based on minutes time frame, 5, 15, 30, 60.
On the 60 minutes chart, the countdown display gets off and then back on again when my pc clock shows exact hour time. On the lower time frame though the countdown does not disappear but as I explained earlier, on a new one minute bar, the countdown shows like 1:30 minute

User avatar
TJ
Posts: 7740
Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Location: Global Citizen
Has thanked: 1033 times
Been thanked: 2221 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby TJ » 13 Jul 2017

Please add this line to your code.
You can find the explanation in the Wiki.


RecalcLastBarAfter( 1 );

User avatar
JoshM
Posts: 2195
Joined: 20 May 2011
Location: The Netherlands
Has thanked: 1544 times
Been thanked: 1565 times
Contact:

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby JoshM » 13 Jul 2017

Please add this line to your code.
You can find the explanation in the Wiki.

RecalcLastBarAfter( 1 );
According to the wiki, `RecalcLastBarAfter()` affects the calculation of scripts. Should it affect the chart's bar countdown timer too?
I have a EURUSD one minute chart. The countdown may show 30 seconds and a new bar starts with a countdown of 1:30 minutes. The 30 seconds is variable it may be anywhere between 1 to 30 but I practically never see it down to 1.
I have a 5 minutes chart and it is synchronized with the 1 minute countdown.
That you don't always see the bar countdown appearing with all the seconds there are in the bar is expected. It's also normal that, for instance, on a 2min chart the new bar starts count with something as 1:45 or 1:30 even.

Such a thing is by design. See the replies by Henry in this thread for more information about this.
I noted that a new bar is not synchronized at all with my PC clock.
This seems to be another issue. I assume here that you checked that your chart uses the same time frame as your computer? If the MultiCharts chart then still uses time that's different from the computer, you might want to synchronise your computer clock. That would help if your computer clock is different from the timestamps of the incoming data.

plaforte
Posts: 75
Joined: 16 Aug 2012
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby plaforte » 13 Jul 2017

Please add this line to your code.
You can find the explanation in the Wiki.


RecalcLastBarAfter( 1 );

TJ, you mean to add this line to my indicator ? I have one oscillator. I added that line to the oscillator code and it did not change the countdown, still off by 30 seconds

User avatar
TJ
Posts: 7740
Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Location: Global Citizen
Has thanked: 1033 times
Been thanked: 2221 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby TJ » 13 Jul 2017

Please add this line to your code.
You can find the explanation in the Wiki.


RecalcLastBarAfter( 1 );

TJ, you mean to add this line to my indicator ? I have one oscillator. I added that line to the oscillator code and it did not change the countdown, still off by 30 seconds

Sorry I read your question wrong... if you are off by 30 seconds, the problem is somewhere else.

plaforte
Posts: 75
Joined: 16 Aug 2012
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby plaforte » 14 Jul 2017

I have a EURUSD one minute chart. The countdown may show 30 seconds and a new bar starts with a countdown of 1:30 minutes. The 30 seconds is variable it may be anywhere between 1 to 30 but I practically never see it down to 1.
I have a 5 minutes chart and it is synchronized with the 1 minute countdown.
That you don't always see the bar countdown appearing with all the seconds there are in the bar is expected. It's also normal that, for instance, on a 2min chart the new bar starts count with something as 1:45 or 1:30 even.

Such a thing is by design. See the replies by Henry in this thread for more information about this.
I noted that a new bar is not synchronized at all with my PC clock.
This seems to be another issue. I assume here that you checked that your chart uses the same time frame as your computer? If the MultiCharts chart then still uses time that's different from the computer, you might want to synchronise your computer clock. That would help if your computer clock is different from the timestamps of the incoming data.[/quote]


Josh, in my case I use 1min chart and the bars start like around 1:30 counting down to about 0:30 and then resetting to 1:30
Thank you for the link to Henry's thread, if I well understand, a 1min bar does not last one minute, it all depends of the ticks, so for people trading on "time", this is not really feasible with MultiCharts.
As to your comment about checking if MC uses time different than my pc, I am not clear about this. I just noted that the countdown and my pc clock are synchronized to the second but not to the minute. I mean that at any minute and 30 seconds of the pc clock time, a 1min new bar starts and shows remaining time about 1:30 and it resets to 1:30 when the countdown reaches about 0:30 seconds left to the countdown, I say about because it varies by a few seconds.

Thank you
Pierre

User avatar
JoshM
Posts: 2195
Joined: 20 May 2011
Location: The Netherlands
Has thanked: 1544 times
Been thanked: 1565 times
Contact:

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby JoshM » 15 Jul 2017

I use 1min chart and the bars start like around 1:30 counting down to about 0:30 and then resetting to 1:30
I'm not sure if I follow you here. If you use a 1 minute chart, a bar countdown cannot (or, perhaps better said, should not) start at 1:30. In theory it should start at 59 seconds counting down to 0, when a new price bar forms. (If the instrument is highly liquid.)
Thank you for the link to Henry's thread, if I well understand, a 1min bar does not last one minute, it all depends of the ticks, so for people trading on "time", this is not really feasible with MultiCharts.
You could create an indicator that counts down till the bar's closing time. That does take a bit of time and might not be as nice as the countdown of the chart itself, but it will be something usable.
As to your comment about checking if MC uses time different than my pc, I am not clear about this. I just noted that the countdown and my pc clock are synchronized to the second but not to the minute. I mean that at any minute and 30 seconds of the pc clock time, a 1min new bar starts and shows remaining time about 1:30 and it resets to 1:30 when the countdown reaches about 0:30 seconds left to the countdown, I say about because it varies by a few seconds.
See time zone in the wiki for setting/checking the time zone setting of a chart.

I still don't get how on a 1 minute chart the bar countdown can say that the remaining time is still 1:30. If it does so repeatedly, the bars would be running out of sync with the chart itself, which probably cannot even happen. (If you understand what I mean, because the bars would then be overlaid on top of each other, because the time axis doesn't matches the bar duration. Does this make sense? :) ).

Can you show some screenshots of this behaviour? I'm not sure anymore if I understand what this thread is about. :)

plaforte
Posts: 75
Joined: 16 Aug 2012
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby plaforte » 16 Jul 2017

Thank you Josh, I should have done that first, one picture is much easier rather than explaining in hundred words. So here is a pdf with 3 screenshots. These screenshots also show the pc clock in the right bottom corner
Screenshots 1 and 2 is the start of 2 consecutive just starting 1min bar
Screenshot 3 is the start of the new bars on all 4 timeframes
So the start of bars all start somewhere around 30 seconds and also end at around 30 seconds never at zero as it should. This is regardless of time of the day and the EURUSD pair is rather liquid. except a few periods but as I said, it always anyway start around 30. In periods with very few ticks like EST midnight, it may happen that the countdown goes down to zero and disappears, I understand this is normal behaviour and when it reappears it may appear at say 20 or 15 seconds, all depends when the first tick comes in, otherwise 30 seconds is what I see the most. during a full day.

Thank you
Attachments
MC countdown off time.pdf
(732.76 KiB) Downloaded 182 times

User avatar
ABC
Posts: 718
Joined: 16 Dec 2006
Location: www.abctradinggroup.com
Has thanked: 125 times
Been thanked: 408 times
Contact:

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby ABC » 17 Jul 2017

plaforte,

you might want to consider contacting the Multicharts support via helpdesk directly to demonstrate the situation. The support team does a great job and is surely able to help you.

Regards,

ABC

User avatar
Henry MultiСharts
Posts: 9165
Joined: 25 Aug 2011
Has thanked: 1264 times
Been thanked: 2957 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds  [SOLVED]

Postby Henry MultiСharts » 26 Jul 2017

Issue solved by synchronizing the PC time.

plaforte
Posts: 75
Joined: 16 Aug 2012
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: bar countdown off by 30 seconds

Postby plaforte » 26 Jul 2017

Thank you Henry, yes I received from the support team the instructions to solve my problem and it was that my pc time was not synchronized. I never checked on this because the setting of my pc clock is set to "automatic synchronize". Following the instructions of the support team, I anyway hit the "update now" button in the clock settings and that solved the problem.

Thank you
Pierre


Return to “MultiCharts”