they make one that makes a clicking noise as trades are being executed. you can hear the pace of execution when it is speeding up . so if it takes 60 seconds for your tick bar to form on average for just a example. you can tell when it starts popping fast. like pop corn.

Crude has a tendency to take off at least once in either direction between 5-7 am EST then again sometime between 9am -2pm EST during the us session. It's within reason to encounter a run of 30-60 occasionally 90 ticks when momentum from trade executions of either lifted offers or hit bids from larger time frame participants and some locals start to enter the markets and pyramid in positions. This is when the "popping" starts occurring, in my opinion. Once the buyers or sellers have exhausted themselves, usually at the complete opposite end of the current and prior days distribution. The opposing sellers or buyers start to stabilize the move. Causing a consolidation.

revtrader 

*** Caution this could get very annoying *** Write an indicator that will play a tick (like on a metronome - use something that can be heard but not loud), This indicator will fire only on the first tick of the bar and you can judge how fast the bars are coming by how fast the tick sound is coming. You could have it turned into an oscillator that would plot the amount of time on each 133 tick bar. I would set a ceiling for the oscillator (say anything over 1 minute is max 100%) or whatever value you chose that you feel is valuable. If the oscillator is maxed then you know the market is slow and you want to wait until the value decreases to enter a trade. Just thinking out loud

Here's a thought, have this (metronome) scripted into your DOM to click when an order has been executed in the order book. Because sometimes a tick on the chart is a representation of multiple limit and market orders being filled. Just a thought.

Its moving on API and EIA data releases, Tues at 430PM / Wed at 1030AM / Fri at 1PM.....following a holiday week like the 4th or memorial day the Tues/Wed data releases get moved back a day and Wed released back to 11 instead of 1030.