Renko Chart: How the Bricks Are Built, How to Pick the Box Size and How Renko Compares to Kagi

A Renko chart is a price chart made of bricks of equal size. A new brick is drawn only when price moves a set amount, the box size, beyond the last brick: up bricks when price rises, down bricks when it falls. Time is left out, so a quiet week may print nothing and a sharp day may print several bricks. To turn from up to down, price has to move two boxes, which is what filters out small swings. The word comes from the Japanese renga, brick.

How a Renko brick is built

TradingView gives the rule with a 2-point box: if the last brick covers 52 to 54, the next brick forms only when price closes at or above 56, or at or below 50. Between 50 and 56 nothing happens.

Three consequences follow from that rule:

• One brick per column, corners touching. Bricks climb or fall diagonally, never side by side.
• A reversal costs two boxes. From an up brick that ends at 54, the first down brick needs 50, a move of 4. In the chart above, built on Bitcoin closes with a 3,430 box, the drop from the September 21 close of 86,620 to 80,150.56 on October 26 printed no down brick: the first one needed a close at or below 78,890.
• Wicks are optional. The chart on this page uses closing prices. StockCharts also offers the high-low range, which uses two prices per bar and prints more bricks.

A Renko chart is not drawn on an even date axis. The 14 bricks above cover 250 days, but they were formed on 13 of them: four up bricks from March 2 to May 4, four down bricks from June 1 to June 5, and six up bricks from August 19 to September 21.

Fixed box or ATR box: the same 250 days, six box sizes

Platforms offer two ways to set the box: a fixed amount, or the Average True Range (ATR), 14 periods by default. The chart counts bricks and reversals (a brick in the opposite direction to the one before) on the same daily Bitcoin closes, from February 21 to October 28, 2026, with the construction of the charts on this page.

Going from a 1,000 to a 2,000 box removed two thirds of the bricks and more than half of the reversals. No size is right in itself: a small box shows every swing and many reversals, a large box keeps only the big moves and reacts late. TradingView notes that a common approach for a fixed box is about one twentieth of the current price; for Bitcoin near 80,000 that would be about 4,000, the fifth row of the chart, which printed 13 bricks on 13 days.

The ATR box has a catch of its own. On this site it is the 14-day ATR of the day before the chart starts, so it uses no future data. Ending on the same day, October 28, a 120-day chart starts on July 1 and gets a box of 2,210, while the 250-day chart above starts on February 21 and gets 3,430. StockCharts takes the ATR when the chart is created instead, and warns that the bricks change as the ATR changes. Either way, the same market can look different from one chart to the next.

The backtesting trap: bricks that appear after the fact

A brick is dated to the bar whose close completed it, but several bricks can come from the same bar. With the 2,000 box, the close of August 21 printed three up bricks at once, from 72,000 to 78,000. With the 1,000 box, the close of June 2 printed five down bricks. A strategy tested on the bricks would show trades at each brick level, though the market only offered the closing price of that day.

Renko vs Kagi

A Kagi chart is a line instead of bricks. According to Steve Nison, cited by StockCharts, it was invented in Japan in the late 19th century. The line keeps going in the same direction until price moves against it by a set reversal amount, then turns. Like Renko, it ignores time. The difference is where the reversal is measured from: Kagi measures it from the most extreme close of the current line, Renko from the end of the last brick on its fixed grid.

On the same Bitcoin closes, from February 21 to October 28, 2026:

With the same distance, both charts turned 11 times, but not on the same days, since one measures from the extreme close and the other from a grid. Halving the Kagi reversal to 2,000 tripled the turns. Kagi charts add a second reading Renko lacks: the line becomes thick (yang) when it breaks above the prior peak and thin (yin) when it breaks below the prior trough.

Renko vs Heikin Ashi and candlesticks

A Heikin Ashi chart also smooths a trend, but it keeps one candle per period and averages prices, so every bar prints something. Renko keeps exact multiples of the box and drops the bars where price did not move enough. A point and figure chart is the closest relative: it also ignores time, with columns of X and O and a reversal of three boxes by convention. Against a classic candlestick chart, Renko gives up the open, the high, the low and the even time axis. The other chart types are on the chart types page.

Does Renko trading work?

Brick color changes, two-brick reversals and support at prior troughs are the usual readings; StockCharts describes the two-brick reversal as a trend change signal. We have not tested any Renko rule, and the pattern statistics on our test bench are all measured on standard candles, never on bricks. A brick chart can make a trend look cleaner than the market was, because the bars in between are gone.