NCTS Q-Stick Description
NCTS Q-Stick is a QStick indicator for NinjaTrader 8, and it comes with the full C# source code. Tushar Chande's QStick asks one simple question: are candles closing above or below where they opened? That makes it a clean read of buying and selling pressure. I added a second mode, because the candle body alone ignores how far price actually traveled. Like anything built on a moving average it reacts late, especially with the default 50-bar period.
How it works. For every bar the indicator takes the close minus the open: positive for an up candle, negative for a down candle. It then averages those values with the MA Type you choose over MA Period bars, SMA and 50 by default. You can also use EMA, HMA, TMA, TEMA, VWMA, WMA or John Ehlers' Super Smoother, a two-pole filter that removes short-term noise. Set Calculation Type to HighLow and each candle counts its full high-to-low range instead, positive when it closed up and negative when it closed down; a candle that closes where it opened counts as zero. A signal fires when the QStick crosses zero: +1 when it rises above, -1 when it drops below.
What you see. A dark cyan QStick line in its own panel, with a white zero line. Above zero, candles have closed higher than they opened on average; below zero, lower. Plot Signals is on by default and marks every zero cross on the price chart: a green-yellow arrow below the bar for +1 and a tomato red arrow above it for -1, sized by Arrow Size (16). It calculates on bar close.
How to use it. Use the side of zero as a bias: favor longs while the QStick is above it and shorts while it is below. A shorter MA Period, like 10 or 20, gives earlier but noisier crosses, while 50 shows the bigger picture. HighLow mode gives wide-range candles more weight, so a big bar moves the line more than a small one with the same body. The hidden Signals plot holds +1, -1 and 0, and the QStick value is exposed too, so a strategy can use both.
Make it yours. Use it as is, learn from the code, or change it yourself or with AI like Claude. You could add a signal line, a moving average of the QStick, and trade the crosses between the two. Or add a small dead zone around zero so tiny flips are ignored, or color the price bars by the QStick side. The whole calculation is a few lines in one method, so it's a quick read. Have some good trades!
