Default settings rarely suit every trading style, and that's especially true for NinjaTrader Renko bars. Getting the brick size, wicks, and gap handling right can be the difference between a chart that shows genuine structure and one that's just noise dressed up as signal.
How to Customize Renko Bars in NinjaTrader for Your Strategy
Getting your setup right takes more than picking a random brick size and hoping for the best. A few practical checks make the difference between a chart that actually helps and one that just looks different.
Setting the Right Brick Size
Base your brick size on the instrument's typical volatility, not a fixed number copied from a completely different market. A brick sized for a slow-moving forex pair will behave very differently on a volatile futures contract.
Choosing Wicks or No Wicks
Decide whether you want wicks enabled on your renko chart, since wicks preserve more price detail than traditional wickless bricks. Wickless charts look cleaner, but they can hide useful information about how far price actually travelled within a brick.
Handling Market Gaps Properly
Check how your chosen bar type handles gaps, since poor gap handling can distort close prices after a significant move. Some Renko implementations lose accuracy specifically around gaps, which matters more than most traders realise until it costs them.
Backtesting Your Settings
Test your settings across both trending and choppy periods before committing to live trading. A brick size that looks great on a strong trend day can produce a confusing mess during a sideways chop.
Why Renko Charts Are Gaining Ground with Retail Traders
The global algorithmic trading market was valued at $20.23 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $29.54 billion by 2031, with the retail segment growing at a 7.87% CAGR through the same period. Retail traders now have access to tools once limited to institutional desks, and that shift shows up clearly in how many are turning to price-based charting.
Price-based charts like NinjaTrader Renko bars strip out time-driven noise that candlesticks can't avoid
Cloud-based platforms have made backtesting and optimisation accessible without expensive infrastructure
Retail-focused broker APIs have narrowed the gap between institutional and individual trading capability
Growing interest in systematic, rules-based trading has pushed more traders toward cleaner chart types
Common Mistakes to Avoid
A few habits trip up traders more often than the actual settings themselves. Spotting these early saves a lot of wasted screen time later.
Using a brick size too small for the instrument, which creates excessive noise instead of reducing it
Ignoring how a bar type performs around news events and gaps, where differences between providers show up most
Never backtesting the exact settings being used live, which hides problems until real money is on the line
Conclusion
Customising Renko bars properly takes a bit of testing, but it's genuinely worth the effort for traders who rely on clean price structure. Get the brick size and gap handling right, and the rest of your strategy has a much steadier foundation to build on.
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