NC Bar Speed Description
NC Bar Speed is a bar speed indicator for NinjaTrader 8, and it comes with the full C# source code. On Renko, NinzaRenko or tick charts a bar only closes when price has done enough, so the time each bar takes tells you how fast the market moves. I built it to see that pace at a glance, by direction, and I think you can spot some edges with it. One honest limitation: on minute charts every bar takes the same time, so it's made for bars that don't close on the clock.
How it works. The value is the seconds a move took, from bar time stamps. In Consecutive mode (the default) it checks whether each of the last LookBack closes (10 by default) was higher than the one before. If so, it plots the seconds from the close before that run to the last close as a positive number; a run of lower closes gives a negative number, and mixed closes give 0. In Single mode it times one bar from the previous close: positive for an up candle (close above open), negative for a down candle, 0 for a doji. A span that includes the first bar of a session plots 0, so overnight gaps don't look like slow bars. Turn on Apply Volume (off by default) and the time is multiplied by the total volume of those bars.
What you see. A histogram in its own panel: dark green bars above zero for up moves, dark red below zero for down moves. It shows time, so a short bar means a fast move and a tall bar a slow one. It calculates on bar close, and the values are available as a Speed series your strategy can read.
How to use it. Watch for changes in pace: a burst of short bars after slow ones shows the market picking up speed, and bars that keep getting taller in a trend show it slowing down. Single mode reads every bar; Consecutive mode only lights up on clean runs. The default LookBack of 10 needs ten higher or ten lower closes in a row, so lower it if the panel shows mostly zeros.
Make it yours. Use it as is, learn from the code, or change it yourself or with AI like Claude. You could turn the value into a true rate like volume per second, add an alert when a run beats a time you set, or let a strategy filter entries with the Speed series. The code is split into small methods for run direction, bar direction, speed, the session check and volume, so each piece is easy to change. Have some good trades!
