Candlestick Settings

Part of the C/C++ Core API. The candlestick pattern functions (TA_CDL*) judge each candle — is its body "long", its shadow "short", two candles "near" — relative to a set of tunable thresholds. These settings control those judgements globally.

API

TA_RetCode TA_SetCandleSettings( TA_CandleSettingType settingType,
                                 TA_RangeType         rangeType,
                                 int                  avgPeriod,
                                 double               factor );

TA_RetCode TA_RestoreCandleDefaultSettings( TA_CandleSettingType settingType );

A candle characteristic is measured against an average of a chosen range over the previous avgPeriod bars, scaled by factor. For each settingType:

• rangeType — what to measure: TA_RangeType_RealBody (open-to-close), TA_RangeType_HighLow (high-to-low), or TA_RangeType_Shadows (the two shadows).
• avgPeriod — how many prior bars to average (0 means "use only the current candle", no averaging).
• factor — the multiplier applied to that average to form the threshold.

TA_RestoreCandleDefaultSettings reverts one setting (or TA_AllCandleSettings for every one) to the built-in default below.

/* Treat a "long body" as 1.2x the average real body of the last 10 candles: */
TA_SetCandleSettings( TA_BodyLong, TA_RangeType_RealBody, 10, 1.2 );

/* ...later, restore the default for that one setting: */
TA_RestoreCandleDefaultSettings( TA_BodyLong );

Choose candle settings once, from a single thread, before making concurrent calls (see multi-threading). They stay in effect until changed or restored.

Setting types and defaults

TA_CandleSettingType values, with the defaults TA_Initialize installs:

Setting	Range type	avgPeriod	factor
TA_BodyLong	RealBody	10	1.0
TA_BodyVeryLong	RealBody	10	3.0
TA_BodyShort	RealBody	10	1.0
TA_BodyDoji	HighLow	10	0.1
TA_ShadowLong	RealBody	0	1.0
TA_ShadowVeryLong	RealBody	0	2.0
TA_ShadowShort	Shadows	10	1.0
TA_ShadowVeryShort	HighLow	10	0.1
TA_Near	HighLow	5	0.2
TA_Far	HighLow	5	0.6
TA_Equal	HighLow	5	0.05

TA_AllCandleSettings targets every setting at once (for TA_RestoreCandleDefaultSettings).

See also

• Initialize and Shutdown
• Unstable Period
• The candlestick pattern functions in the function reference (the Pattern Recognition group).