Estimating Tick Rate from Tick-Bar Timestamps in ProRealTime

Summary

The document presents a ProRealTime indicator for estimating how many ticks occur per second from bars built from a specified number of ticks. It converts each bar’s open-time value into elapsed seconds, takes the difference between successive bar times, and divides the configured tick count by that interval. The resulting series can be used to observe changes in trading activity, and the author suggests that users could add a moving average.

This is a compact coding example, not a trading strategy or a validated market-activity measure. Its estimate depends on the configured tick count matching the chart’s bar size and on consecutive timestamps representing elapsed time consistently. The calculation may also need care around session boundaries, missing intervals, or zero time differences. The document provides no testing, market-specific examples, or evidence that tick rate predicts price changes or improves execution.

Key ideas

• The indicator estimates ticks per second by dividing the bar’s tick count by elapsed time since the prior bar.
• The configured tick quantity must match the tick-bar timeframe for the estimate to be meaningful.
• The author suggests smoothing the resulting series with a moving average.
• The example provides no evidence that tick rate predicts prices or improves trading decisions.

Tags

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.