Using Indicators With Non-Standard OHLC

All of the pre-made custom indicators use the standard Open, High, Low, Close, Volume columns for their calculations (where those columns are required).

You can though, if you wish, create new custom indicators which use any column of your choosing.

For example, let's say that you want to check for the "Three Black Crows" candlestick patterns on Heikin-Ashi bars, rather than the standard OHLC bars.

For this you will need to use a total of 5 columns - the first 4 create the Heikin-Ashi bars, the 5th is for the candlestick. The easiest way to set this up is to export the "Heikin-Ashi" custom indicator (or the one closest to what you want to do). Then re-import, changing the ID and name of the custom indicator.

This is now your indicator and you can modify it however you like. As it already creates the Heikin-Ashi bars in the first 4 columns, all we have to do is add the 5th column with our candlestick calculations:

1. Edit the column.
2. Click the "Is Required" box.
3. Select the function name of "Three Black Crows"

Now that we have done that, the required arguments are written out for us in the field:

Open column, High column, Low column, Close column

What we have to do is replace those arguments with the column names we want to use. In the pre-made custom indicator for candlesticks, we always use:

OPEN, HIGH, LOW, CLOSE

However, in this example you want to use the Heikin-Ashi bars instead. So for the open column, type "Column01". This corresponds to the column where the Open price of the Heikin-Ashi bar is calculated. For the high, type "Column02", and so on. So the arguments field now reads as:

Column01, Column02, Column03, Column04

The candlestick calculations will now check the Heikin-Ashi bars instead of the standard OHLC bars. But there's one step left. We have to make the column title unique. The standard title is:

CDL3BLACKCROWS

If you choose the same column title, then it will cause problems if someone uses both the standard Three Black Crows candlestick pattern and your new one in the same trading system, alert, or chart (which you are likely to do when testing your new indicator). So name it something like:

CDL3BLACKCROWS_ASHI

Anything really - as long as it's unique.

That's the column finished. Then you create the Indicator which points to this column (points to Column05 in this example). Test that it works on the "Indicator Test" window. And finally chart. If you're happy then you can use it in your trading systems.

See also:

• Custom indicators are like spreadsheets
• Expressions and Aggregates
• Column titles