ATAS/X Indicator · CVD · Displacement · InertiaTick
PND Delta Candles
Custom hollow candles colored by a blend of CVD and price displacement, plus tiered InertiaTick glow signals when price gets overextended. Three signals in one visual — with a statistical 7-bar timeout marker for long-side reversals.
Discord — support, updates, and feature requests. The download is unsigned; Windows may show a SmartScreen warning on first run — click More info → Run anyway.
What it does 📊
🎨
Three signals, one visual
Each candle's color blends rolling CVD (net order flow) with price displacement (how far price actually moved). When both agree → strong color. When they conflict → amber neutral. The candle tells you flow direction and conviction at the same time.
✨
InertiaTick overextension glow
A separate render pass adds a cyan glow on the bottom when price is overextended down (long-side reversal setup), or an amber glow on the top when overextended up (short-side context). Three tiers — dim → medium → bright — by signal strength.
🎯
7-bar timeout marker
A small dotted line + triangle is drawn 7 bars to the right of every medium or bright bottom glow. On a 4-year NQ backtest, 91% of ≥4-pt upside reversals after a long-side glow arrived within 7 bars. The marker is your built-in stop-watch.
⚡
Adaptive — no tuning needed
Neutral and max-intensity thresholds scale automatically to the instrument and timeframe. Same settings work on NQ 1m and NQ 5m without re-calibration. Inertia z-scores normalize across regimes the same way.
The three signals — in one indicator
The indicator runs three independent calculations and weaves them into a single chart visual. Each tells you something different about the same bar — flow direction, actual price travel, and whether the market is overextended.
CVDCumulative Volume Delta
Net difference between buying and selling pressure (ask-aggressor minus bid-aggressor volume), summed over a rolling window of N bars. Drives the white / dark / amber candle gradient half of the blend. Tells you who's winning the order flow battle.
PRICEPrice Displacement
How far price actually moved over the same N-bar window —
close[bar] − close[bar−N]. Session-anchored, so it never crosses midnight. Combined 50/50 with CVD so disagreement (flow up, price flat) drags the candle toward neutral instead of falsely signaling conviction.INERTIAInertiaTick Oscillator
A composite overextension oscillator combining RVI, linear regression, std-dev normalization, volume weight, tick density, and trade-size quality. Renders as the cyan / amber glow on the top or bottom of the candle body. Three tiers based on z-score magnitude.
Want the original CVD-only behavior? Turn Enable displacement coloring OFFand the indicator falls back to pure CVD-driven candles — identical to the original PND Delta Candles. The glow layer can be disabled separately with Enable glow OFF.
How the candle color is calculated — step by step
Inputs
Delta + Δprice
CVD over N bars
close[bar] − close[bar−N]
close[bar] − close[bar−N]
→
Step 1
Normalize
Each signal scaled
to −1 → +1
to −1 → +1
→
Step 2
Blend 50/50
(CVD_n + Disp_n) / 2
= combined signal
= combined signal
→
Step 3
Adaptive thresholds
Neutral = avg × 0.15
Max = avg × 2.0
Max = avg × 2.0
→
Step 4
Power curve
tp = t ^ 0.7
(earlier color)
(earlier color)
→
Output
Candle color
LerpColor(soft, strong, tp)
per direction
per direction
The combined CVD + Displacement reading runs through the same adaptive threshold engine as the original indicator — neutral fraction (0.15) sets the amber zone, max multiplier (2.0) caps full intensity, and the power curve (0.7) shapes how quickly mid-range values reach noticeable color.
Adaptive threshold diagram — neutral zone and gradient range
Neutral Fraction (0.15) — Below this fraction of avg |combined signal|, bar shows amber. Raise to color fewer bars. Lower to always show a directional color.
Max Multiplier (2.0) — At this multiple of avg |combined signal|, gradient reaches full intensity. Lower to 1.5 to reach strong color sooner.
Color gradient
Bull (both signals up)
soft — low intensitystrong — high intensity
#88FFFFFF semi-transparent white → #FFFFFFFF opaque white
Bear (both signals down)
soft — low intensitystrong — high intensity
#FF505757 dark teal-gray → #FF242425 near-black
Neutral / conflicted
#9EFFFF00 — combined signal within the neutral zone, or CVD and price displacement disagree
Power Curve (default 0.7): shapes how the gradient ramps up. At t^0.7, mid-range values show noticeably colored bars — not just the extremes. Setting it to 1.0 gives a linear ramp. Setting it to 2.0 keeps bars mostly soft until a strong reading appears.
Mock chart — candle color states
InertiaTick glow — the overextension layer
A separate rendering pass draws a colored glow on the top or bottom third of the candle body when the Inertia X oscillator exceeds a z-score threshold. The glow tells you price has moved too far, too fast — and is therefore more likely to mean-revert.
Dim
|z| ≥ 1.2 · Alpha 80 (~31%)
Context cue. Price is starting to lean overextended — early heads-up but not actionable on its own.
Medium
|z| ≥ 1.7 · Alpha 160 (~63%)
Standard signal. Triggers the 7-bar timeout marker on bottom (long-side) glows.
Bright
|z| ≥ 2.4 · Alpha 230 (~90%)
Strongest signal. Rare, high-conviction overextension. Also triggers the 7-bar timeout marker on bottom glows.
Why top glows are dimmer. Top (short-side) glows render at 50% of their normal opacity by default — shorts have a weaker historical edge than long-side reversals in the indices, so the visual weight is calibrated accordingly. The Short-side opacity scale setting lets you override this if your asset behaves differently.
The 7-bar timeout marker
91% of ≥4-pt upside reversals after a long-side glow arrive within 7 bars (per 4-year NQ futures backtest). A small dotted line + cyan triangle is drawn 7 bars to the right of every medium or bright bottom glow — it's your built-in countdown for when the setup is most likely to resolve.
Use it as a time-based stop: if you take a long after a medium or bright bottom glow and price hasn't shown a real reaction by the marker, you can step aside without waiting for a hard stop-out. Dim glows do not get the marker — the statistical edge is concentrated in the medium and bright tiers.
Toggle with Show marker on bottom-glow bars. The forward distance is configurable (Timeout — bars forward, default 7). Marker color is independently themable.
Direction stripe — reading the candle body
Bull candle (Close > Open)
Open is at the bottom of the body.
Stripe fills the bottom portion (open side).
Hollow space is at the top (close side).
Stripe fills the bottom portion (open side).
Hollow space is at the top (close side).
Bear candle (Close < Open)
Open is at the top of the body.
Stripe fills the top portion (open side).
Hollow space is at the bottom (close side).
Stripe fills the top portion (open side).
Hollow space is at the bottom (close side).
Doji (Close = Open)
Body height is zero → drawn as a single horizontal line in the bar's color. Color is still driven by the blend, so an amber doji = conflicted flow + indecision.
Stripe height controls
Stripe Fraction (0.9) — 90% of body height filled. Lower for a thinner accent line.
Min Stripe Ticks (1) — Minimum height in ticks, so tiny-body bars still show a visible stripe.
Min Stripe Ticks (1) — Minimum height in ticks, so tiny-body bars still show a visible stripe.
All settings — quick reference
| Setting | Default | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Price Displacement | ||
| Enable displacement coloring | ON | Master switch for the displacement signal. ON = blend CVD + price displacement 50/50. OFF = CVD-only coloring (identical to the original PND Delta Candles indicator). |
| Displacement period (bars back) | 15 | Lookback for close[bar] − close[bar−N]. Session-anchored — never crosses midnight. Best kept equal to the CVD Period below so both signals cover the same window. |
| Draw candles behind other indicators | OFF | ON = candles render in the chart background so other indicators (heatmaps, footprints, volume profile) paint on top. Useful when this is a context layer, not the primary visual. |
| 2. Delta | ||
| Period (bars to sum) | 15 | Rolling window for summing CVD. On a 1m chart, Period=5 ≈ 5-min flow, Period=15 ≈ 15-min flow. Higher = smoother. Lower = more reactive. |
| 3. Adaptive Thresholds | ||
| Lookback period | 60 | Bars used to compute the rolling average for the adaptive normalization baseline. Lower = adapts faster. Higher = more stable. |
| Neutral zone (× avg) | 0.15 | Fraction of avg combined signal where the bar shows amber. Raise toward 0.3–0.5 to only show directional color on stronger readings. Lower toward 0.05 to color nearly every bar. |
| Max intensity (× avg) | 2.0 | Multiple of avg at which gradient reaches full strength. Lower to 1.5 in fast markets. Raise to 3.0 if you only want full color on extremes. |
| 4. Colors | ||
| Bull soft | #88FFFFFF | Low-intensity bull color (just above the neutral zone). |
| Bull strong | #FFFFFFFF | Full bull intensity (combined signal ≥ max threshold). |
| Bear soft | #FF505757 | Low-intensity bear color. |
| Bear strong | #FF242425 | Full bear intensity. Near-black by design. |
| Neutral | #9EFFFF00 | Amber neutral — combined signal within the neutral zone, or signals conflict. |
| 5. Gradient | ||
| Power curve | 0.7 | Exponent on the normalized intensity. <1 pushes color out earlier; =1 is linear; >1 keeps bars soft until near max. |
| 6. Candle Body | ||
| Body fill | #00000000 | Optional fill color inside the candle body. Default alpha=0 = fully hollow. Set a non-zero alpha for a translucent filled body. |
| 7. Direction Stripe | ||
| Stripe height (fraction) | 0.9 | What fraction of the body height the direction stripe occupies. Lower to 0.3–0.5 for a subtle accent. |
| Minimum stripe ticks | 1 | Minimum stripe height in ticks, regardless of body size. Ensures small-body bars still show a distinguishable stripe. |
| 8. Inertia V2 Glow | ||
| Enable glow | ON | Master toggle for all InertiaTick glow rendering. Off = pure delta-candles behavior with no overextension layer. |
| Dim threshold | 1.2 | z-score above which a dim-tier glow appears. Lower = more dim glows; higher = fewer. |
| Med threshold | 1.7 | z-score for the medium-tier glow — and the trigger for the 7-bar timeout marker on bottom glows. |
| Bright threshold | 2.4 | z-score for the bright (strongest) tier. Rare; reserve for high-conviction overextension reads. |
| Top glow color | #F59E0B | Amber — color for overextended-UP glows (short-side context). |
| Bottom glow color | #22D3EE | Cyan — color for overextended-DOWN glows (long-side reversal setup). |
| Glow coverage (% of body) | 33% | How much of the candle body the glow covers (top or bottom third by default). Raise for a stronger visual presence; lower for a subtle hint. |
| Alpha — dim | 80 (~31%) | Opacity for dim-tier glows. |
| Alpha — med | 160 (~63%) | Opacity for medium-tier glows. |
| Alpha — bright | 230 (~90%) | Opacity for bright-tier glows. |
| Short-side opacity scale | 0.5 | Top (short) glows render at this fraction of their normal alpha. Calibrated for the historically weaker short edge in the indices — raise to 1.0 if your asset behaves symmetrically. |
| Gradient steps | 8 | Number of gradient bands in the glow fade. Higher = smoother fade, slightly more rendering cost. |
| 9. Inertia X Math | ||
| RVI period | 10 | Donald Dorsey Relative Vigor Index period — the inner momentum oscillator that feeds Inertia X. |
| Linear Regression period | 14 | LinReg smoothing applied to RVI output before std-dev normalization. |
| Standard Deviation period | 10 | StdDev window used to normalize the smoothed-RVI ratio. |
| Z-score window | 50 | Rolling window for z-scoring the raw inertia value. Smaller = more reactive; larger = steadier. |
| Orderflow avg window | 50 | Window for the volume weight, tick weight, and quality gate averages. |
| Price/Delta blend α | 0.6 | Weight of price-based inertia vs CVD-based inertia. 0 = CVD only, 1 = price only. |
| 10. 7-Bar Timeout Marker | ||
| Show marker on bottom-glow bars | ON | Draws a dotted line + triangle a fixed number of bars ahead of every medium or bright bottom glow. |
| Timeout (bars forward) | 7 | How many bars forward the marker is placed. Default 7 matches the 4-year NQ backtest reversal window. |
| Marker color | Cyan (80%) | Color of the timeout marker line + triangle. |
Setting the Period for different timeframes
Both the CVD Period and the Displacement period control the same N-bar window for their respective signals. Keep them equal so both signals describe the same time horizon. On a 1-minute chart, each bar = 1 minute, so Period ≈ minutes of flow.
| Timeframe goal | On 1m chart | On 5m chart | Lookback suggestion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intrabar / scalp | Period = 3 | Period = 1 | Lookback = 20–30 |
| 5-minute flow | Period = 5 | Period = 1 | Lookback = 30–50 |
| 15-minute flow (default) | Period = 15 | Period = 3 | Lookback = 60 |
| 30-minute flow | Period = 30 | Period = 6 | Lookback = 80–100 |
| Hourly bias | Period = 60 | Period = 12 | Lookback = 120+ |
Tip: Run two instances side by side — one at Period=5 for scalp reads, one at Period=15 for bias direction. When both agree, conviction is higher.
Installation
Get up and running in 3 minutes
The indicator is distributed as a single compiled .dll file — all three signal layers (candle coloring, InertiaTick glow, 7-bar marker) install together. No coding required.
Discord — support, updates, and feature requests. The download is unsigned; Windows may show a SmartScreen warning on first run — click More info → Run anyway.
Download ATAS/X — the order flow platform this indicator runs on.
atas.net — download →
atas.net — download →
Download the DLL — use the Download PNDDeltaCandlesInertia.dll button above. The file is
PNDDeltaCandlesInertia.dll.Place the DLL in the ATAS indicators folder:
Windows:
macOS:
Windows:
%AppData%\ATAS\Indicators\macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/ATAS/Indicators/Fully restart ATAS/X — .NET caches assemblies until the app is closed. Quit completely and reopen.
Add to chart — open the indicators panel, search
PND Delta Candles, and add it to any chart.Questions, feature requests, or stuck on install?
Discord is the support channel — live chart discussions, release notes, and direct help.