Renko and Point and Figure
Two chart styles that remove time from the horizontal axis entirely. A new mark appears only when price moves a defined amount.
MadStockAlerts Research · Updated August 28, 2026
What to take away
- Both plot price movement rather than price against time.
- A new brick or column requires a defined move, so quiet periods produce nothing.
- The box size is the parameter, and it changes the chart completely.
- They filter noise by construction, and they lag by the same construction.
- Any indicator computed on them is computed on a transformed series.
MAD Academy Training Video · 0:45
Charts With No Time Axis at All
Renko and point-and-figure only print when price moves a set amount, which filters noise and discards when everything happened.
This lesson is part of a Stock Alerts + Tools plan.
Removing time
A conventional chart plots a bar per period whether or not anything happened. Renko and point and figure plot a mark only when price has moved a defined amount, so a week of quiet produces nothing at all and an hour of violent movement produces several marks.
| Renko | Point and figure | |
|---|---|---|
| The mark | A brick, drawn when price moves one box size | Columns of X for rises and O for falls |
| Reversal | A brick the other way requires the box size | A reversal requires a stated number of boxes, conventionally three |
| Time | Absent from the axis | Absent from the axis |
| Parameters | Box size | Box size and reversal amount |
What the filtering does
Because a move smaller than the box size produces nothing, small fluctuations disappear entirely. That is the appeal: a trend appears as an unbroken run of bricks or a single tall column, uninterrupted by the noise a conventional chart shows.
It is also the cost. A reversal is not visible until price has moved the reversal amount, so these charts are late by construction, and the amount they are late by is exactly the parameter that was chosen.
What they are used for
- Point and figure has a long tradition in identifying horizontal levels, because congestion appears as adjacent columns at similar prices.
- Both make trend runs visually obvious, which is their principal claim.
- Neither shows volume against price in a comparable way, since the horizontal axis is not time.
- Both are used for a counting technique that projects targets from the width of a congestion area.
The last item is the same measured-move convention the patterns pillar describes, applied to a different chart. It scales a projection to the size of a structure and has no mechanism behind it.
The caveat that applies to any indicator on them
An indicator computed on a Renko or point and figure series is computed on a transformed sequence in which time has been removed and small moves deleted. A 14-period RSI on Renko bricks is not a 14-day RSI, and comparing the two is comparing different quantities.
This is a specific instance of the general rule in this pillar: a chart style is a rendering of an underlying series, and any calculation performed on the rendering inherits whatever the rendering discarded.
Setting the box size
The single parameter can be set in three ways, and the choice determines whether the chart is comparable across securities and over time.
| Method | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| A fixed price amount | Simple, and not comparable between a $5 and a $500 security |
| A percentage of price | Scales with the price level, so early history is not compressed |
| A multiple of ATR | Scales with the security's own volatility, and changes as volatility does |
The third is the most defensible and introduces its own complication: a box size that changes means the chart is not consistent over its own history, so a brick from two years ago represents a different move from one today.
There is no setting without a trade-off, which is the recurring conclusion for every parameter in this library. What matters is choosing one for a stated reason and applying it consistently, so that charts remain comparable.