Raindrop Charts

[sawtooth500 33]

What charting platform has the ability to show raindrop charts? A few days ago someone posted a screenshot in the chat, but I didn't catch it. I thought it was eSignal, but after some quick googling I don't see anything eSignal related with raindrop charts? 

If someone knows of the platform, please share!

[sawtooth500 33]

Actually I think I found it: TrendSpider

https://www.trendspider.com/raindrops/

Anyone know of any other alternatives as well?

Still definitely going to use DAS for trading, but I'm thinking of trying out TrendSpider for raindrops. It's relatively inexpensive considering just for raindrop charts I won't need any L2 data subscriptions. 

[Justin 262]

It's not raindrops, but another popular alternative to candlesticks here in the forum is Bookmap.

[sawtooth500 33]

Oh I already have Bookmap too and I highly recommend it - but Bookmap does have drawbacks. The biggest is that Bookmap does not yet support the NYSE/ARCA book, so all that data is missing from it. Bookmap is great because it visualizes the L2 tape and gives you a history of the "other side" of the book, allowing you to easily identify areas of liquidity. However, the volume at price function in Bookmap is about the same as in DAS, very difficult to read. I'm excited about trying raindrops as it may finally show me where inside of a candle the volume is. You can read that inside of bookmap too by looking at where the circles are forming, but it's just difficult to read in bookmap. 

I'll also add that while bookmap does have candlesticks, for the most part they aren't that great. The charting in DAS is much better than bookmap. The value of bookmap lies in the heatmap and the effective histogram of L2 data that the heatmap signifies. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by sawtooth500

[Justin 262]

Yeah, this raindrop chart is quite interesting; I just read their white paper on it. It's a really fascinating way of visualizing volume.

If you sign up, report back! I'd love to hear someone's first hand experience with it.

[sawtooth500 33]

Yes I probably will try it out in the near future. If anyone wants to read their white paper here it is:

https://www.trendspider.com/whitepapers/raindrops_280519.pdf

The one thing I'm wondering is if there is a way to turn off the whole left side/right side thing in the raindrops. Really, that seems a bit arbitrary. Having a left/right side on a 1 min chart is like having a 30 second chart, or having it on a 2 min chart is the functional equivalent of having a 1 min chart. It just seems sloppier and harder to read with that left/right side thing. What I'm most interested in knowing is where in the candle is the volume and it's distribution - evenly distributed, top heavy, or bottom heavy. That's what is most telling. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by sawtooth500

[sawtooth500 33]

So I played around with it a bit today - it's pretty disappointing actually. 

Firstly it's a web based interface: meaning slow. I thought it was real time data, but the price always seems to be lagging a little behind DAS. 

Secondly, for the raindrop charts, their min timeframe on those is 10 minutes. But it's weird, because of how they divide their raindrops, like a 10 min raindrop has a right half and left half, which are each 5 min. Why not just make a single 5 min candle where you have variable width within the candle to indicate the relative volume within that candle?

Raindrops seem interesting because if I could watch them forming in real time, then you could theoretically tell where all of volume is happening. But because of the web interface and min 10 min candles on raindrops, it's really hard to watch stuff form in real time. 

I'm going to give it another day or two, but I'll probably cancel my subscription. I still think that the raindrops are a great idea, but it seems poorly implemented. 

[Justin 262]

Ah that's too bad! The delay alone makes that unusable...

Thanks for checking it out though!