Hey guys lets say you have a strategy and you want to know when an instrument first trades at a certain price
which would be the most efficient type of bar to use within a strategy? Betterrenko, Renko, Tick or does it matter?

you're asking a tough question here. it's like asking which car is the best to go from destination A to B, sedan, coupe, SUV, minivan, etc...

your question puts too much emphasis and reliance on bar type rather than trade location. I personally use a 5 tick reversal but that's out of preference. I could probably trade my location just fine with a volume or range or minute candlestick chart.

elitetradernyc 

Hey guys lets say you have a strategy and you want to know when an instrument first trades at a certain price which would be the most efficient type of bar to use within a strategy? Betterrenko, Renko, Tick or does it matter?

renko bars and tick look the best because they have more bars which gives the illusion that there's more opportunities or trends when really they happen over a short period of time. If you can catch them that's great but if your strategy focuses primarily on catching these fast moves you're basically sacrificing efficiency for frequency.

Let me rephrase the question. Lets say ES is dropping if it prints 2099 on the way down, which bar type
will give me that info the fastest or does it even matter?

elitetradernyc 

Let me rephrase the question. Lets say ES is dropping if it prints 2099 on the way down, which bar type will give me that info the fastest or does it even matter?

It probably doesn't matter considering if price hits any number, whether it be a fraction of a point or a whole number, it should print that price has hit that tick. But whether or not price has made any retracements before another bar prints is a different story.

In my opinion, renko and tick charts show more movement that is hidden inside the bars but sometimes there's so much movement that you can't see the big picture like with time based bars.

I prefer time based bars just because it gives me a sense of change over time whereas lets say renko might look like a huge trend but it only occurred in 2 minutes.