Indicator Development · · 4 min read
How I Built the CRT Radar Indicator for TradingView
Why I built the CRT Radar, how each model's rules were coded, and the design decisions — like moving entries from M5 to M15 — that came from trading it live.
For a long time my Candle Range Theory process was all manual: mark the higher-timeframe candle, wait for the sweep, drop down for the turtle soup, hunt for an entry, repeat across several markets and sessions. It works, but it's slow, and the mistakes I made were almost never about the idea — they were about missing a step when I was tired or rushing.
The CRT Radar started as a way to make the chart enforce my own rules. This post covers how it's put together and the decisions that came from actually trading with it.
Rule one: code the sequence, not just the candles
Plenty of indicators draw boxes around a candle range. That's the easy part. What matters in CRT is the order things happen in:
- A higher-timeframe Candle 1 sets the range.
- Candle 2 runs one side of it.
- A lower-timeframe turtle soup proves that run failed.
- Only then does an entry requirement count.
So every entry requirement in the Radar — order blocks, inverse FVGs, balanced price ranges and CISD — has to print during the cycle and after the turtle soup. If it formed earlier, it's ignored. That single rule removes most of the low-quality setups I used to take.
I define the turtle soup strictly: a candle on the turtle soup timeframe runs the previous turtle soup candle's high beyond Candle 1 and closes back below it (and the mirror at the lows). CISD means a close through the open of the opposing candles that ran into the purge.
One indicator, several models
CRT isn't one timeframe. Different sessions respect different candles, so the Radar ships with preset models, each with its own CRT timeframe, turtle soup timeframe and entry timeframe:
| Model | CRT candle | Turtle soup | Entries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model 1 | H7 | 30m on Candle 2 | M15 |
| Model 2 | H6 (strictly) | 30m at the Candle 2 high/low | M15 |
| Asia | 3 PM H7 candle | 15m (required) | M3 |
| London | H1 at 2, 3 and 4 AM | 15m | M5 |
| Classic 2-6-10 / 1-5-9 | H4 | 15m | M15 |
The Asia model is a good example of how specific these get. It ranges the 3 PM candle to the close, expects a tap into an M15, M30 or H1 key level, then looks for an M3 reversal — and the range is cut at midnight so it doesn't interfere with the London model.
The M5 lesson
The first versions used M5 entries almost everywhere. On paper that gave tighter stops. In live trading it was just too fast — signals fired, flipped and invalidated before I could act on them, and it produced more noise than edge.
Moving Model 1, Model 2 and the Classic model to M15 entries made the alerts calmer and the setups cleaner. The faster M3 and M5 entries stayed only where the session really demands it (Asia and London). I also added OTE and Kiss of Death levels on M15 for most models — the KOD has to be a real pullback, not a tiny retracement, or it doesn't count.
Keeping the chart clean
The other big decision was the lifecycle. A setup's entry requirements stay on the chart until Candle 3 closes or they're invalidated. Once Candle 3 closes back through Candle 1, the whole setup is removed. No graveyard of old boxes from three sessions ago.
The settings followed the same philosophy. The manual mode is deliberately minimal: choose the CRT timeframe, the entry timeframe and up to five key levels. The internals are still running underneath — you just don't have to babysit them.
Making it look like it belongs
The Radar runs alongside the rest of my suite — the Draw Engine, DOL Map, Quarterly Cycles, Highs and Lows, and the Engulfing Bar Close. I wanted all of them to look like one product, so they share colours (the bullish green matches my candle colour) and the same clean label style. Feedback from traders using them shaped a lot of that, from bolder lines to bringing order block boxes back.
What's next
I'm still building. The current focus is the Draw Engine — adding breaker blocks, hidden order blocks and OB+FVG blocks — and longer term, tying the suite together into a single automated system.
If you want to see the result:
- The full, customisable CRT Radar 2.0 is invite-only on TradingView.
- CRT Radar Lite is free and runs the Classic model with no settings.
- The rules the Radar enforces are written out in full in the CRT Handbook.
And if you want to see what it looks like when it all lines up, here's the 1:175 trade breakdown.