Hi, I was wondering if you could supply  formulas for locating heiken ash up bars, down bars and no change bars. 

                                                                                                                     Thanks,

                                                                                                                            Marty

If by "up" and "down" you mean closed higher and lower, then try these formulas:

Up
(O+H+L+C)/4 > (O1+H1+L1+C1)/4

Down
(O+H+L+C)/4 < (O1+H1+L1+C1)/4

For Heiken Ashi, Open is equal to yesterday Open + Close divided by 2.

Bruce had a nifty exponential moving average that could be used in place of the Open for Heiken Ashi as well but I cannot find the post at the moment.

I think you want the How to implement Heiken-Ashi substitutions for any Open, High, Low, and Close topic.

Bruce, i've seen it written multiple times now that a Heiken Ashi close is calculated as:

(O + H + L + C) / 4

However, I also understand that the Heiken Ashi open is calculated as:

(O1 + C1) / 2

So wouldn't that mean the actual Heiken Ashi close should be calculated as:

((O1 + C1) / 2 + H + L + C) / 4    ??

Or as you have stated previously you could substitute out the exponential 3 period moving average of the previous day's close for the heiken ashi open:

(XAVGC3.1 + H + L + C) / 4

Can you clarify this for me? As I have been using the O1 + C1 / 2 in my Heiken Ashi calculations and would like to understand if that is correct.

Thanks

I think you are missing the distinction between actual price values and HA price values. They are not interchangeable.

The HA Close is equal to (O + H + L + C) / 4. The HA Close is not equal to (haO + haH + haL + haC)  / 4 or equal to (haO + H + L + C) / 4.

The HA Open is also equal to (previous HA Open + previous HA Close) / 2 and not to (O1 + C1) / 2 (not even remotely). You may want to take a look at my Tuesday, April 19, 2016 2:29:08 PM ET post in the How to implement Heiken-Ashi substitutions for any Open, High, Low, and Close topic as to what this means and why you should use (XAVGO3.1 + XAVGH3.1 + XAVGL3.1 + XAVGC3.1) / 4.

But if HA open is always calculated as (O1 + C1)/2 then it would seem that HA Close would always need to be calculated as (haO + H + L + C) / 4.

Without using haO in the formula you are not carrying forward one of the basic principles that constitute Heikin Ashi.

I'm still not clear on this point as their seems to be a contradiction when it is stated that the HA Open uses yesterday's open and close, but that data is ignored when calculating the close.

It was my understanding that (O + H + L + C) / 4 is only used to calculate the first bar.

HA open is not always calculated as (O1 + C1) / 2 it is always calculated as (haO + haC) / 2 which just ends up being (XAVGO3.1 + XAVGH3.1 + XAVGL3.1 + XAVGC3.1) / 4 because of the way the math works out.

HA close does in fact use just the actual price values in the calculations.

I think this finally makes sense to me. 

Which means that my HA_Trend formula (separate thread) is not actually based on a moving average of HA close but instead, an odd invention of my own.

I will have to revisit this and do some more experimenting.