Signals and indicators
Candle-close confirmation
Candle-close confirmation means a signal counts only after the candle that produced it has closed, not while that candle is still forming.
A candle is not finished until its time is up. Until then its high, low and close can all change. Candle-close confirmation is the rule that a signal is valid only once the candle that triggered it has closed. On a 15-minute chart, a condition met at 10:07 am is not a signal; it becomes one only if it still holds at 10:15.
The reason is simple. Price often pokes through a level mid-candle and pulls back before the close, leaving only a wick. A trader acting on the poke is in a trade that the finished chart never showed. Waiting for the close filters out many of these intrabar spikes, which are common in Bank Nifty and in MCX crude oil.
The cost is a later entry. By the time the candle closes, price may already have moved some distance, and the next candle can open away from the close. On higher timeframes the wait is longer: up to an hour on an hourly chart. That is the trade-off, fewer false signals in exchange for a less favourable price on the ones that work.
The common mistake is jumping in early because the signal looks certain with two minutes left. Sometimes it holds, and the habit forms. Then a candle reverses in its last seconds and the early entry has no valid signal behind it. The other mistake is forgetting that a candle closing late in the session leaves little time for an intraday trade.
Worked example
A Bank Nifty level broken mid-candle but not on the close
Illustrative numbers: on a 15-minute chart, Bank Nifty has resistance at 56,000. The 11:15 to 11:30 candle trades up to 56,060 at 11:22, then closes at 55,970. There is no close above 56,000, so there is no confirmed signal. A trader who bought the spike at 56,040 is 70 points under water at the close. The next candle, 11:30 to 11:45, closes at 56,050. That is a close above the level, confirmed at 11:45.
In WizeBuySell
Every WizeBuySell signal is confirmed on candle close. Nothing is final while the candle is forming; the signal, with its entry, stop-loss and three targets, is fixed when the candle closes and does not repaint afterwards. This holds on every timeframe from 1-minute to daily. The AmiBroker version has popup and sound alerts, so you need not stare at every candle.