Heikin Ashi¶

Indicators · Bar transforms

Synthetic smoothed candles. Wires anywhere a Bars input is expected; downstream EMA / RSI / Tester see the smoothed series instead of raw prices. Useful for visually obvious trend persistence at the cost of intra-bar noise.

Heikin Ashi ("average bar" in Japanese) replaces raw candles with synthetic, smoothed candles that make trends visually obvious. By averaging each bar with its neighbours, it filters out the noise that makes ordinary candlesticks look choppy, leaving long runs of same-colour candles during trends and clear colour changes at turns. It's not an overlay — it transforms the bars themselves, so anything downstream sees the smoothed series.

How it works¶

Each Heikin Ashi candle is computed from the raw OHLC: the HA close is the bar's average price (O+H+L+C)/4, and the HA open is the average of the previous HA candle's open and close — which is what carries the smoothing forward. The block outputs HA Bars in the same shape as normal bars, so it wires anywhere a Bars input is expected: feed it into an EMA, an RSI, or even the Tester, and those downstream blocks compute on the smoothed series instead of raw prices. The trade-off is that HA candles don't show the true open/close of each bar, so they hide some intrabar information.

When to use it¶

Use Heikin Ashi when you want clearer trend persistence and fewer noise-driven flips. As a visual, the long colour runs make it easy to stay in a trend and spot exhaustion (small-bodied candles with wicks both sides). As an input, feeding HA bars into your indicators smooths their signals — an EMA cross on HA bars whips around far less than on raw bars. The caution: because HA prices are synthetic, never use them for actual fill prices or precise stops — backtest fills should use real bars. It's a smoothing lens for signals and visuals, not for execution prices.

Example¶

Smoother trend signals: wire your raw Data Source into Heikin Ashi, then feed the HA Bars into an EMA crossover — the smoothed candles cut the whipsaw versus a raw-bar crossover. Keep the actual Tester trading on real bars for honest fills, using HA only to generate the signal. Backtest in the Tester.

Tips & gotchas¶

It transforms the bars — downstream blocks see the smoothed series, not an overlay.
Never for fills/stops — HA prices are synthetic; execute on real bars.
Long colour runs = trend; doji-like HA candles = potential turn.
Great for cutting signal whipsaw, at the cost of hiding intrabar detail.

Inputs¶

Socket	Type	What to wire in
Bars	`bars`	Source price bars to smooth

Outputs¶

Output	Type	Plots as	Description
HA Bars	`bars`	—	Heikin Ashi candles — same shape as input bars

Reference auto-generated from the block catalog · category Indicators.