Answer:

This is a "complexity related" question sent in by a client in South Africa. Ideally, all charts used for forecasting are constructed with cash data and plotted in NEoWave fashion (i.e., with the high and low in the order they occurred). Outside of the stock market, most bar charts are futures based or have expiration dates (i.e., they are not cash based). If a bar chart is all you have to work with, the time frame you are following (whether hourly, daily, weekly, etc.) is not what determines the number of bars that should be visible. As always, the focus should be on the complexity of the chart (i.e., the number of monowaves visible).

When working with a high/low NEoWave chart, the ideal number of monowaves visible should be about 44. To see 44 monowaves on a NEoWave chart requires from 22 to 33 groups of high/low data (i.e., the highs and lows extracted from 22-33 bars). When you use bars instead of a NEoWave plot, the complexity of the chart is cut in half (since the high and low occupy the same space). Therefore, to create the same complexity on a bar chart as on a NEoWave chart, you need twice as many bars. Consequently, instead of needing 22 to 33 bars, you need about 44 to 66 bars of data visible to do accurate wave analysis on a bar chart.