Does indicators update before the candles closes

In QuantConnect, indicators are updated when a new bar is formed. This means that if you're using a 5-minute bar, the indicator will update every 5 minutes when the bar closes and a new one starts. This is the standard behavior in most trading platforms and is designed to avoid look-ahead bias.

However, if you want to update the indicator with live data, you would need to run your algorithm on a live deployment. But, as mentioned in the forum discussion, updating the indicator at every time step until it closes at the 5-minute mark is not possible. Furthermore, it is not good practice to use indicators in that way.

Here is an example of how you might set up an EMA indicator with a 5-minute bar:

self.AddEquity("SPY", Resolution.Minute)
FiveMinuteConsolidator = TradeBarConsolidator(timedelta(minutes = 5))
FiveMinuteConsolidator.DataConsolidated += self.On5minData  
self.ema8 = ExponentialMovingAverage(8)  
self.RegisterIndicator("SPY", self.ema8, FiveMinuteConsolidator)  
self.SubscriptionManager.AddConsolidator("SPY", FiveMinuteConsolidator)  
self.SetWarmUp(timedelta(8))

In this code, self.ema8 is an 8-period exponential moving average (EMA) indicator. The self.RegisterIndicator method is used to update the indicator with data from the "SPY" equity every time a new 5-minute bar is formed.