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FXCM Forex feed (free)
Ensign Windows includes a free Forex feed from FXCM (Forex
Capital Markets). The feed
has real-time quotes on 56 currency pairs. Ensign's implementation processes the FXCM feed in parallel with the data
feed you subscribe to. You can have a feed from eSignal, IQFeed, TransAct
Future, Open Tick or Interactive Brokers and optionally elect to also have the 56
forex symbols from FXCM. Click here for more documentation on using the FXCM
feed.
Bradley Stock Model
The Bradley Model is a data file that is overlaid on the host chart.
Click menu File | Open | Internet Services. Select the Download tab
and wait for the form to fill in its dates, and then use the History drop
down box to select the Bradley.d entry.
Then click the Download button.... this will put the Bradley.d file in
the C:\Ensign\Day folder. Next step would be to open a chart for the $INDU.D
daily file. Refresh the chart if it is not current.... those on other data
feeds might have a slightly different symbol. With the INDU chart
showing, click on the Study button for the study drop down list and select
Overlay Chart.
Type Bradley as the Symbol, and select Line Chart as the Chart Type and
Hidden as the Chart Scale. The particular example shown also has the
Invert Pattern checked. Then close the study property form. When the overlay
is on the chart, you can press the letter 'I' key to invert the pattern.
Press 'I' key again to uninvert it.
Double clicking on the price scale will change the selection
from the INDU scale to the Bradley scale. Then you can drag vertically on
the Bradley scale to resize the overlay, and you can drag vertically on the
chart to shift the overlay up or down relative to the INDU host.
You can adjust the overlay size and position to obtain a pleasing
relationship with the host chart. Any questions? Double click the price
scale again to return to the INDU scale and then you can drag the host chart
leftward to you have more right side margin showing and thus be able to see
the Bradley pattern in the 2007 future.
The y-axis is not fixed. The two items plot on totally different
scale ranges. So I have shown you how to resize the overlay and reposition
the overlay so you have a pleasing association. Ok, enjoy having the Bradley
overlay as an enhancement to the Ensign Windows program.
The pattern is date specific, and you should have the overlay property of
Lock Shift L/R checked so the two cannot be moved separately. You can shift
the x-axis when they are locked and they both move together to stay date
aligned. Dragging horizontally on the time stamps and this will tighten
or widen the bar spacing so you see more or fewer bars in the view.
The following links display articles from the Trading Tips newsletter on the
Bradley Model.
Pesavento Pattern Labels
The LBL marker for the Up Trend and the Down Trend will label the swings with
a dot and these letters:
- HH - Higher High
- LH - Lower High
- =H - Equal High
- LL - Lower Low
- HL - Higher Low
- =L - Equal Low
Virgin Point of Control The Line Style for
the Virgin POC is taken from the Range Band row's Style. The
fuzzy fat line selections can be used.
Check the Extend POCs option to have the POC extend to the right
margin. However, the POC extension after it has been touched will be
drawn using a dotted line instead of the line style selected on the Range
Band line.
Fibonacci Levels Styles
Gradient Line Styles Four new line styles are
available for use on the Fibonacci Levels, Fibonacci Retracement, Support and
Resistance, and Daily Price Lines draw tools. 
This
example shows using the Gradient line style which will gradient color fill
between two prices using 2 colors. The first price and color will come
from the line with the gradient line style selection. In the example
this is the Yesterday High price. The 2nd price and color will come
from the next line on the tool's property form. In the example this is
the Yesterday Low price. 
This
example shows the Solid fill line style. The fill needs 2 prices
which come from the line with the solid line style selection and the next
line on the property form. A single color is used which is the
color selection on the line with the solid line style. 
This
examples shows the other two line style selections for plotting two widths of
a colored line that has a gradient transition to the chart background
color. These two line styles can be used with all studies and all draw
tools. The green gradient line style selection will have 10 pixels of
gradient transition on either side of the drawn line. The red gradient
line style selection will have 20 pixels of gradient transition on either
side of the line. 
This
example shows using the green gradient line style with a moving average and
with the Stochastic study.
Advance-Decline Spread
The IB feed symbol $AD-NYSE (or -NASD) will post the Advance-Decline value in
the Last field so it can be plotted. The same discussion applies to the
to the $VOL-NYSE and $VOL-NASD symbols.
Ensign Windows automatically calculate the spread between the Advance and
the Decline issues or the Advance and the Decline volume and puts this spread
in the Last field, which was previously unused for this symbol. The
Advance value is sent in the Bid field, the Decline value is sent in the Ask
field, and the Unchanged value is sent in the Bid Size field.
Individual values can be plotted individually using (A), (D) or (U) suffix
to the symbol. You can plot the original symbol directly to have the
spread, as in the example. The $AD-NASD plot is showing the spread of
Advancing - Declining issues. Previously you would have resorted to
using a custom symbol to calculate the spread to plot it. There is not
any refresh for this spread. But you can collect the data, and use this
symbol for a chart or a study, or as an overlay on another chart.
A plot of $VOL-NYSE will be the advancing volume - declining
volume. You can still do a custom symbol for a spread or ratio of
any 2 symbols.
Equi-Volume Bars and 3-D Shading
This example shows the following new capabilities:
1) The candle bodies can have the 3-D color shading which makes them
appear rounded like pipes.
2) The bar widths can be influenced by the bar's volume, kind of like an
Equi-Volume effect. However, the genius of what has been done is to keep the
bar centers equally spaced so the studies and draw tools can still be applied
to the chart with the equi-volume widths.
3) Since we want some candles to be wider than others, we now permit
bodies to overlap, which uses a portion of the space of the neighboring bars.
All of these effects are implemented as options, so they can be enabled if
you want to use them and disabled if you do not want to use them.
Click menu Setup | Charts to control the 3-D shading with a checkbox on
this form for global properties.
The new options here are:
1) Show Vertical Grid in study sub-windows. and when checked the vertical
grid on the chart will extend through the sub-windows below the chart where
you put studies. I like having the option checked.
2) 3-D Candlestick Body shading.... check this box to have the beautiful
candles shown in the prior chart example.
The option for the variable bar width, or Equi-Volume as we
are calling it, is a private chart property and set on the chart's CTRL+P
property form.
Check the Bar Equi-Volume option to permit body widths to vary in size.
This option can also be used with bar charts and line charts, and will make
these images have varying widths. In the middle are spinner boxes for
controlling candle construction
Have a larger Candle Maximum such as the 20 you see in the example.
If you set this smaller, then the biggest width will be narrower. Note
that the Candle Minimum Spacing in the example is a negative number, and this
permits the overlapping. If the value were 0 or a positive number, then
the candle bodies would not overlap at all which might restrict Ensign being
able to show the Equi-Volume effect. The Max Width of 20 and Min
Spacing of -8 seem to work quite well for the visual of Equi-Volume bars.
The Equi-Volume width is based on a 20 period exponential average of the
volume. The narrowest bar will be shown when the volume is less than
50% of the average. The next larger width is from 50% to 100% of the
average. The 3rd width is 100% to 150% of the average. 4th, 5th,
and 6th larger widths are every 50% of average volume, ie 150-200, 200-250,
and 250-300%. These zones for increasingly wider bars have worked quite
well to give the visual of when volume has dried up, and when there is very
active volume. The 20-bar average of the volume works equally well on
tick chart, range, volume, minute, daily, weekly and monthly charts. After
a Globex session, there are always wide bars on the day session open because
of increased volume. It is typical for volume to dry up
during mid-day lunch, and than have wider bars again into market close.
When you see a breakout bar with higher volume, you love it and it is very
graphical fatter appearance.
Seconds Charts
Click the Charts button and on the Charts panel, enter new times in the
small edit box [1] for the Seconds chart. An entry will be the letter
S and the number of seconds for the bar. Example: S150
is for a 150-second bar. Click the Add button [2]. The new time
entry will show in the Time column [3].
In this example, each bar is 150 seconds (2.5 minutes) in
duration. The seconds charts can be from 1 to 9999
seconds. Use a 1 minute chart instead of a 60 second chart,
because the refresh process will be faster.
Ask/Bid Volume
Press CTRL+P keys for the chart property form. There are 3
check boxes [1], [2], and [3] to control the visual of the Ask/Bid Volume
bars. These are the boxes under the A/B label. The three
boxes in the right side column under the Volume label control the Volume
bars. Check the Show | Ask/Bid Volume box [1] to show a sub-window with the Ask
Volume plotted above the center line and the Bid Volume plotted below the
center line. The sum of Ask Volume and Bid Volume make up the total
Volume for the bar. Ask Volume is the trade volume at the Ask (up
ticks), and Bid Volume is trade volume at the Bid (down ticks). Check the Show
| Volume box [1], 2nd column, to show the Volume sub-window with Volume bars.
Check the Candle Style boxes [2] to have the Ask/Bid Volume
bars and Volume bars use a candle body style of a rectangle instead of a
bar. The example shows the Setup | Charts option for
3-D shading is enabled, which affects the style used by the chart bars and
volume bars. Check the Equi-Volume boxes [3] to have the volume bars
vary in width.
The Ask Volume bars will plot using the Volume (Ask) color, and the Bid
Volume color [4]. The Color Bar study applied to the Ask/Bid
Volume is selected using the Ask/Bid combo box [5]. The Color Bar
study applied to the Volume is selected using the Volume combo box [6].
Ask/Bid Volume Spread
A DYO can calculate the Ask/Bid Volume Spread as
shown in this example.
Line A calculates Ask Volume - Bid Volume and plots this
spread using the Histogram marker in sub-window 1.
Ask/Bid Volume Spread Ratio
A DYO can calculate the Ask/Bid Volume Spread Ratio as
shown in this example. The ratio is (Ask Volume - Bid Volume) /
Total Volume.
Line A calculates the ratio. Ask Ratio is Ask
Volume / Total Volume. Bid Ratio returned by [$F] is Bid Volume /
Total Volume. Line B sets the label font size to 24 (see next
section on Font Size). Line C multiplies the ratio by 100, and
initializes the paint can with the color green. Line D
conditionally changes the color in the paint can to red when the ratio is
negative. Line E outputs the label on the center line of the sub-window
because Number is zero. The color used by the font is the paint can
color because the color selection is black. [2`] prints as
the label the contents of Global Variable [2] using an integer format.
Font Size
This chart example shows the chart scale and time stamps hidden. Use
hot keys CTRL+ALT+T or uncheck the chart pop-up menu Show | Scale
& Time. Chart shows the clock toolbar. Increase the Right
Margin property to maintain space for the labels to be shown.
The following DYO was added to the chart to show a label in a size 16
font. The label has 3 lines showing the Ask Volume, current price, and
Bid Volume. The volume of trading at the Bid is 902,
and the volume of trading at the Ask is 38 so far in this bar under
construction. The current price is 1324.75.
The label font size can be changed using the Global Action | Label Font
Size = # selection. The Number field sets the size of the
font. The label had 3 look-up tags separated by commas. The
commas split the label into separate lines.
- [$A] references the Ask Volume. The ` character in the [$A`]
notation formats the value to an integer.
- [$C] references the current price.
- [$B] references the Bid Volume. Again, the ` character
is used to format the value to an integer.
- [$E] references the Ask Ratio.
- [$F] references the Bid Ratio.
See the Property Form documentation for a
complete list of the look-up tags that are available to show other bar and
quote page values.
There is also a Global Action | Section Font Size = # selection to control
the font size of the Message Text shown in the Sections.
The Font Style can be set to Bold by using a negative number
with either of these Font Size selections. Example: Number
= -16. The WoodieCCI template which can be
downloaded from the Ensign web site using the Internet
Services form has been updated to utilize a larger font size and a bold
font style in the places marked by the 3 red arrows.
Ask/Bid Volume and Volume Color Bars
The Ask/Bid Volume bars and the Volume bars can be colored
independently of the chart price bars. Click the Color Bars button
[1] to
show the Color Bars panel. The procedure is to select a location
bullet [2], and then the study [3]. The example shows the Dunnigan
color bar study being applied to the chart price bars.
The Ask/Bid Volume bars (middle window) were colored by
selecting the Ask/Bid bullet, and the Normal color bar study.
The Volume bars (bottom window) were colored by selecting the
Volume bullet, and the Volume Increase color bar study.
Note the presence of two new color bars studies on the
list. Ask/Bid Volume study will use one color when the Ask Volume
exceeds the Bid Volume and a different color when Ask Volume is less than the
Bid Volume. Buy/Sell Pressure study will use one color when Buy
Pressure exceeds Sell Pressure, and a 2nd color when Sell Pressure exceeds
the Buy Pressure.
Buy Pressure and Sell Pressure are similar to Ask Volume and
Bid Volume. However, the Pressure values are derived from bar prices
using proprietary formulas. When either of these color bar
studies are used with the Ensign Flutes bar style, the coloring of the flute
body will be split to show the Ask Volume and Bid Volume ratio. The top
of the flute shows the Ask Volume and the bottom of the flute shows the Bid
Volume.
Clock Toolbar
Click menu View | Clock Toolbar to display the clock. It can be
dragged off of the toolbar using the vertical line on the left side of the
docked clock.
Click on the click to display its configuration menu.
The clock can show either 12 hour or 24 hour format, and with hours, minutes
and seconds, or just hours and minutes. A count down clock is
also available, such as selecting the menu 5 Min Remain will show the number
of minutes and seconds remaining in a 5-minute period. Either or
both types of clocks can be shown.
The next two examples show count down clocks. The
current time is moved to the top of the clock and the time remaining in the
count down period shows in the larger font. The picture on the
left shows the normal background color. When the time remaining is less
than 30 seconds, the background changes to the warning color. When the
time remaining is less than 5 seconds, the clock will blink by alternating
the two colors. Both colors can be changed using the clock menu.
The clock will float above other windows in
Ensign. When both times are shown, use the caption line of the
window to drag it to reposition the clock. When only one time is
shown, the caption line is hidden. However, the clock can still be
moved. Position the cursor just inside the frame. There is a
margin around the clock time that can be clicked down on for dragging the
clock instead of showing the menu.
Alarmed Lines
Alerts can be set on a Draw Line, Linear Regression line, Fibonacci
Levels, Fibonacci Retracements, and Daily Price Lines. Each of the
property forms for these draw tools have similar properties for the
alarms. The Fibonacci Levels property form is shown as the
example.
The Alert Message box is checked to show a message at the top
of the chart when any of the shown lines are crossed by price
action. The message will use the Font and Panel
colors. A sound can also be played, and the example show
the message text is to be copied to the Clipboard. This is done so that
a program like DeskBot or Speakonia
can speak the message text.
Check the Auto Remove Message box if you want the alert
message to be hidden when the alert condition is no longer true. The
message text is automatically generated by Ensign, and will be similar to the
example shown where the text will say Cross Above or Cross Below followed by
a name of the line being crossed.
Alerts that are triggered for Price Alert, Study Alerts and
Line Alerts are being logged. Click the Yellow Bell button to show the
Alerts form. Select which of the three lists you want to view.
The example shows the Alert List for Lines with our alert message that the
Fibonacci 0 line was crossed at 11:17:06 by a price at 1323.25 on the ES #F
chart.
Gann Square Grid
The next topic will be the super capabilities of the Gann Square draw
tool.
The grid shown on the chart was created by manually drawing
one Gann Square, but then checking on the property form the option for Fill
Chart. Note the use of subtle colors and line styles for the
quarter and middle lines the divide the square.
The next example is created by checking the options on the
right hand side of the property form for the 100%, 50% and 25% Diagonal
lines. The Horz and Vert lines have been unchecked except for the 0.000
Level to remove some of the line clutter.
The chart examples in the next section show the Gann Square
grid with the Intersect Circles option checked, and the Horz and Vert for the
50 level checked.
Hide Scale and Time
We have an new tiny charts feature, accessed from the right mouse click
pop-up menu. Select Show | Scale and Time menu to check or uncheck it,
or press the Hot keys for this menu which are CTRL+ALT+T.
A normal chart would have this menu checked. The tiny
chart option would have the menu unchecked, which results in a chart like
this.
Note the scale on the right, the time stamps on the bottom
and the Min and Max buttons have been removed. Now you can resize the window
to be tiny like this example on the left. The example on the right
shows a study in a sub-window.
See the earlier example for Font Size where a DYO was used to
show a current price in a larger font on a chart with the scale removed.
DYO Categories and Looping
There are major changes to the DYOs. If you have older Ensign with
DYOs and templates, running the new version will auto convert these DYOs to
the new format when you open the charts. If you
RESAVE the workspace, the chart, or the template, the DYO files will be
changed, and then you cannot go back to the old Ensign. Files created
with the new Ensign cannot be used by older Ensign users. Old Ensign is
Sept 4th version or earlier. New Ensign is any version after Sept
4th. Everyone will eventually upgrade to the new
version.
Some of the major changes to the DYOs are as follows.
1) Some categories were getting to have huge selection lists with over 200
entries. These have been divided into additional categories.
The Global Value category was divided into a new category called Function
and the Global Value was renamed to be Expression.
The Chart Value category was divided to create DYO Value category, and the
DYO Value selections are those that reference other DYO lines, such as Line A
Ave[#]
The Chart Flag category was divided to create DYO Flag category and its
selections also reference other DYO lines such as Line A Goes True
These changes will make it easier to find what you are looking for now
that the listings are shorter
And while the DYO lists were being reorganized, selections that are
similar were grouped together. It started out that way and got a bit
disorganized as more items were continually added to the bottom of the
selection lists.
2) The next major change to the DYO was adding the ability to branch
through the use of Go To statements. Now it is possible to skip over a
group of lines, which basically is a Begin..End blocking and you can jump
back in the DYO listing which implements looping.
The following example calculates an average volume where the values being
averaged occur at the same time period each day.
This example is a template you can download named Time-Volume
using the Internet Services form.
Let me discuss the template design.
I have applied the template to a 1 hour chart, day session only, of ES and
there are 7 hourly bars per day. So if I am working on the 10:00 bar, I
know that 7 bars earlier is the 10:00 bar for yesterday, etc. So on
Line A lets set a parameter for this time interval of 7 as the number of bars
to jump back to find the same time bar in a prior day. This jump back
distance is the number of bars to jump back, and will be my 'delta' distance.
Line B is the number of bars to fetch for the average, and a 10 is our
10-period moving average parameter. If you want a different average,
edit the number on Line B. With the parameters in place, there are 3
more things I need to initialize.
I am going to read bar values back in time using there index reference. So
Line C initializes a GV point to the current bar's Index. This will be GV [3]
and I need two more GVs initialized to zero, so GV [4] will be where I sum
the volume values and GV [5] will be our counter for the number of times we
iterate through a loop. Line D sets [4] and [5] to zero.
Ok, now for the action to be done inside of our loop which is Line E
through Line G. Line E will get our index pointer and decrement it by
the delta size and resave in the index GV [3]. Line F will get
the volume at the Index position read by GV [3] and also add in the value
from the number field which is reading the contents of [4] which is our sum.
This summation is rewritten back to GV [4]. Line G is the new Go
To IF statement and it says to go back up to Line E based on a condition.
The Selection shows Inc(Value); Test (Value < #) so it is a composite
statement that will increment the contents of Value, which is our counter GV
[5].... THEN it will test the result to see if it is below our Period limit
in GV[2]. The Inc(Value) thrown in on the Go TO just saves a step in
incrementing the counter, which is going to be a common use item for looping.
The increment read GV[5], added 1, and resaved in GV[5] directly. The
result of G is Boolean, and not the counter value, and we have no use for
this result so the Write GV on Line G is left on zero. When our count
arrives at 10, our Period parameter, the looping passes to H instead of to E.
Now we can read the sum in [4] and divide by the Period in [2] and plot
this as a red curve line.
Line J is just a little illustration of controlling the background color
for the Section message. The message Text is the average from Line H
and the current bar's volume value using [$V]. The message shows on 2 lines
because the text contains a comma to divide the message. The character
with the [H`] is the character on the tilde key and is just a formatting
control to show this as an integer. Same with the ` with the [$V`] it shows
result as an integer format to eliminate the .00
Line Logic is set to the Boolean result of Line I and Line I is a simple
test of whether the Average written by Line H to GV [0] is below the bar's
Volume. When the test is True, the background of the section message
will be green and when it is false the section message will be red. This is a
quick visual if the volume is below the average (red) or above the average
(green). This kind of matches the red/green coloring I used in the bands on
the other template.
This template illustrate several techniques, such as initializing
parameters, reading bar values elsewhere on the chart, looping, plotting,
coloring the section background, and showing values in integer format. The
template is intended to be a teaching example, but should have use as well.
Previously you have not had a way to have an average volume based on the
bar's time of day position. Now you can know if the volume at mid day is
excessive, or the volume at session open is normal, higher or lower. You do
not get this insight by just doing a regular moving average of all adjacent
volume values.
Standard Color Dialog
The color dialog remembers the custom colors you set.
Hexagon Color Dialog
The Hexagon Color Dialog has been enhanced to have a vertical
slider bar to offer lighter and darker shades for the selections. The
slider bar will have 11 unique positions. The dialog makes over 1400
unique color selections available.
Click menu Setup | Computer to select which style of Color
Dialog you prefer to use.
No Frame Option
All flavors of Ensign candlesticks can have the candle body
and wicks drawn with the candle frame color or with the body fill
color. Check the No Frame box to use the body fill color. Uncheck the No Frame box to use the Frame color.
No Frame options are also available for the Ask/Bid Volume
and Volume bars when they use a Candle Style.
Overlay History
In the past users creating custom symbols with Setup | Custom Symbols form
would often have a simple spread or ratio, and yet lack having any back
history. If the same formula can be expressed in our Overlay study to
do the spread or ratio, then you will now be able to get some back
history. Create the overlay, and when it displays it makes the
calculations by loading the chart files and syncing the data bars.
Ensign Windows has the answer because it plots the spread or ratio on the
chart.
The feature added was to automatically write the spread or ration
calculations out as an Ensign chart file. The file written will always be the
name Overlay, with the chart time frame for an extension, in the same folder
as the source data, such as C:\Ensign\Minute.
You can use Windows Explorer to rename the Overlay file to be the symbol you
use for your custom symbol. And then viola, you have some back history for
your custom symbol chart.
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