A trader reads a candle at a glance: how big it was, where it closed, how much of it was wick. A strategy can't glance, so it needs those things as numbers. The Candle Metrics node measures every candle as it closes and hands you its body, its wicks, its full range, where it opened and closed inside that range, and which way it went.
- Takes
- Nothing. It reads its series' candles
- Gives
- Eight measurements of the last completed candle
- Reach for it
- A rule depends on the size or shape of a single bar
How it works
Everything this node reports is about the completed candle. It waits for a bar to close, measures it, and those numbers are what your rules read throughout the next bar. So a condition built on Candle Metrics always acts one bar after the candle it describes. There's no setting that changes that, because a candle doesn't have a close location until it has closed.
Four outputs are distances, in points on ES and NQ and in dollars on AAPL, MSFT and NVDA:
| Output | Measures |
|---|---|
| Body Size | Open to close, never negative |
| Full Range | High to low |
| Upper Wick | From the top of the body up to the high |
| Lower Wick | From the bottom of the body down to the low |
The three parts always add up: upper wick, body and lower wick together are the full range.
Two outputs are locations, on a scale from 0 to 1. Close Location says where the close sits inside the bar's range: 0 on the low, 1 on the high, 0.5 halfway. Open Location is the same reading for the open. Between them they describe a candle's shape without a single price in it, so "opened in the bottom quarter, closed in the top quarter" means the same thing on ES at one price and NVDA at another. A bar with no range at all, where the high equals the low, reads 0.5 on both.
The last two are flags. Is Bullish is true when the candle closed at or above its open, and Is Bearish when it closed below. Every candle is exactly one of the two, which means a doji with its close right on its open counts as bullish.
You choose which outputs sit on the node, and the editor makes that easy: it lists all eight with an anatomy drawing beside a chart of real bars. Point at any candle and the drawing redraws with that bar's proportions and every value filled in, computed the way the engine computes it.
Example: buy a bar that was bought from the bottom up
Say you trade NQ 5m and you want momentum bars: candles that opened near their low, closed near their high, and covered real ground on the way. Three conditions describe that.
Put Open Location, Close Location and Full Range on a Candle Metrics node. Wire Open Location into a Comparison, Less Than or Equal, against a Constant of 0.25. Wire Close Location into a second one, Greater Than or Equal, against 0.75. For the size, wire Full Range into a third Comparison's a and an ATR with Period 14 into its b, set to Greater Than, so only bars wider than an average bar count. AND the three through a Logic node set to three inputs, into a long Entry.
When a bar like that closes, the entry fires on the bar after it. The two location rules don't need retuning when NQ's price changes, and the ATR comparison keeps up with volatility, so nothing in this rule is a hard-coded number of points.
Settings
Candle Metrics has nothing to set. Its editor is where you choose which outputs sit on the node, and like every price-action node it reads the primary series unless you point it at another.
Outputs
Use something else when
When it doesn't behave
My entries come a bar late
That's the design. The node measures a candle once it has closed, so a rule on it can only act from the next bar. If your idea is about where price is right now, compare Current Price against a level instead.
Is Bullish is true on a doji
A candle that closes exactly on its open counts as bullish here. If you need a candle that really closed up, AND Is Bullish with a Comparison checking Body Size is greater than 0.
My 5-point body filter does nothing on AAPL
The distance outputs are in the instrument's own price units, so 5 means 5 points on ES and 5 dollars on AAPL, which few AAPL candles reach. A fixed number rarely travels between markets. Compare against an ATR on the same series, or use the two location outputs, which read the same everywhere.
Going further
Because Candle Metrics keeps no memory from one bar to the next, it can feed a Since, which is how you write rules about a run of candles. "At least 3 of the last 5 bars closed in their top quarter" is a Comparison of Close Location, Greater Than or Equal 0.75, wired into a Since's condition with its window set to 5. The Since's Count in last 5 output, Greater Than or Equal 3, is your rule.
There's nothing on the node to sweep, so any tuning happens on the Constants you compare its outputs against. Go easy. A backtest will happily tell you 0.78 beat 0.75, and that's almost always noise. Pick round thresholds that match the idea, and change them only for a reason you'd write down first.