Chart Parameters - BLUEWATER TRADING · PDF fileIntraday Bar Type ... Chart Time Range ... The Chart Parameters window allows you to customize your charts ranging from bar types, time

Chart Parameters

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 2

Chart Parameters Window ................................................................................................................. 3

Colors ................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Volume Chart Display Type .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Fonts ................................................................................................................................................................................. 7 Intraday Bar Type ............................................................................................................................................................. 7 Dimensions ....................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Chart Time Range ............................................................................................................................................................. 9 Heikin-Ashi ...................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Miscellaneous ................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Pane Settings .................................................................................................................................................................. 11 Other Options ................................................................................................................................................................. 12

Introduction The Chart Parameters window allows you to customize your charts ranging from bar types, time frames, start and stop times, historical data, font size and color and a variety of other options. The “Chart Parameters” window is opened by right clicking on the chart and choosing “Chart Parameters” from the drop down list.

Chart Parameters Window For instructional purposes the Chart Parameters window is divided into 10 sections.

1) Colors

Click on any button in this list and a color chart window will open. Left click on the “Define Custom Colors” button and the color chart will expand allowing you to create your own custom colors.

Background You can choose any color for the area surrounding the vertical and horizontal scales outside the panes with price and indicators.

Drawing Area

This will color inside the panes with your prices and indicators.

UpBar

This will color an Up bar or candle. The default color is blue. You could create green up bars.

DownBar

This will color the Down bar or candle. The default color is red.

Candlestick

This will color the wicks of the candles. (Lines that extend from the candle bodies.)

Buy

If “Show Fills” is checked (on the right side of Chart Parameters window in section 10) when a Buy Order is filled there will be a small circle with the number of your trades in order of execution. The size of these circles can be changed using the “Trade Width” option in section 5. You can change the color of these circles here.

Sell This option is the same for Sell Fills as described in “Buy” above.

Grid Line

This will color your Grid lines (or dots) if “Show Lines” (section 10) is checked.

Text This will color the numbers for prices, time and date.

Value

This will color the current price on the price scale.

Bid/Ask Bars

This feature is available in the Professional Version. You can color the various bars here. Clicking on this button opens the window to the right.

2) Volume Chart Display Type

This feature is available in the Professional Version.

3) Fonts There are 2 categories of fonts to change.

1. Small - Any default size font that appears smaller can be changed here. This includes the main price scale, indicator scales and the time scale.

2. Large – Any default font size that appears larger can be changed here. This includes the current values of price and cross hair values. If you have “Show Last” checked under Pane Settings (section 9) it also controls the indicator values in the vertical pane.

This default Font window will open when you click on the “Small” or “Large” button.

1. Select a Font.

2. Select the Font Style.

3. Select Font Size.

4. See a preview of the selected font, size and style.

4) Intraday Bar Type

Time Bars These bars complete after the specified time period. If 3 minutes is selected then each bar represents the price high, low, open and close after 3 minutes.

Volume Bars These bars complete after the specified volume has completed. If 200 is selected then each bar represents 200 lots traded.

Ticks Bars These bars complete after the specified number of ticks have completed. If 30 is selected then each bar represents 30 ticks or trades. Each trade could be 1 lot or more.

Range Bars These bars complete after the specified price range is achieved. If 4 is selected then each bar represents a trading range of 4 ticks.

Renko Bars Renko charts isolate trends by taking price into account but ignoring time. If you like working with Renko charts you can choose the “brick” size here. (This is simply the minimum price change required for a new brick to appear.)

Reversal Bars Reversal bars are looking for the market to reverse direction. You can specify the desired number of ticks of reversal from the last high (on a up bar) or low (on a down bar) before that bar should close and a new bar should start.

PriceChg Bars A price change bar chart is an Interval that uses changes in price, instead of time, to display the data. You can set the number of price changes you want before a new bar is started.

5) Dimensions

You can change the look of the bars or candles on the chart with these options.

1. Pen Width – changes the thickness of the wick or the tail on candlesticks or the body of OHLC bars.

2. Bar Width – changes the width of the body on candlestick bars and the thickness of the volume bars in the volume pane at the bottom of the chart.

3. Bar Space – changes the space between any bar types.

4. Trade Width – adjusts the size of the circles around the trade numbers that are created with each buy and sell order. “Show Fills” must be checked to see the fills on the chart.

6) Chart Time Range This allows you to set up your chart for a particular amount of time using various time bars.

1) Start Time

Use Days Back must be unchecked.

Click here to open a calendar to set the Start date for your backfill data. Then click separately on the hours, minutes, seconds and AM/PM using the up/down arrows to set the start time.

2) End Time Uncheck “Use Last” to set the End Time as described in Start Time above.

3) Use Last

Check this to set the End Date to the current time.

4) Use Days Back With this checked you can type in how many days back you want to see in your chart. The default is 5 days of data.

5) Bar Type

You can choose Intraday, Daily, Weekly or Monthly from the drop down menu. If you select Intraday use the “Intraday Bar Type” (section 4) to customize the type of bars you want on your chart.

6) Use Continuous

Click this to use #F for the Contract Expiration. This is the continuous contract that will allow you to choose data from any time period available.

7) Heikin-Ashi

Use this option to change your candlesticks to a Heikin-Ashi chart. The Heikin-Ashi technique is used by technical traders to identify a given trend more easily. Hollow candles with no lower shadows are used to signal a strong uptrend, while filled candles with no higher shadow are used to identify a strong downtrend.

8) Miscellaneous

Volume Cap - You can set a maximum volume so the volume pane will not expand beyond the selected volume.

Scale - This sets the space from the highest bar to the top of the chart and from the lowest bar to the bottom of the chart.

The larger the number the greater the space between the bars and the top and bottom of the chart.

Axis Offset – This will control the amount of space between the last price bars and the vertical price scale.

This feature is very useful when using Fibonacci tools.

9) Pane Settings

Upper/Lower Lots – This allows you to filter the lot size that is used to form your bars.

Example: If “Lower Lots” is set to 50 and a tick comes in less than 50 lots at the price of 1200 for the ES, then that particular 1200 price will not be included in the bar. This may or may not affect the hi/lo/op/cl of that price bar.

Split Volume – When this is checked, the volume bars will show the bid and ask volume for each bar instead of the total volume. This is very useful to see if there were more buyers or more sellers on that bar.

Scale Separate - This can be used if you want to put an indicator with a different scale in the same pane as price or another indicator. It is best to check or uncheck this to see what works best for you.

Display Last – If this is checked you will see the indicator value in the large font size in the vertical scale. The value of the indicator will be the same color as the indicator.

10) Other Options

OHLC This will change the default candle chart to Open/High/Low/Close bar charts

Bid/Ask Bars This will change the chart to bars showing the buying vs. selling in a single bar. The buying is blue and selling is red.

Show Fills Checking this shows your fills on your chart. The buy fills are blue circles and the sell fills are red circles. The fills are numbered consecutively.

Show W.O. This will show your Working Orders as lines on the chart with the price and the “x’ to cancel your working order. The red lines are sell orders and the blue lines are buy orders.

Reverse This will move the price pane to the left with the price bars also updating and moving left instead of right. The time scale will be updating from right to left.

Show Lines When this checked and “Dotted Lines” unchecked, you will see solid grid lines on the charts. With this unchecked there will be no grid lines on the chart.

Dotted Lines “Show Lines” must be checked for this option to work. If “Dotted Lines” and “Show Lines” are both checked the grid lines will appear as dotted lines instead of solid lines.

Excl. Overnight Check this to exclude overnight (globex) bars from your chart. You can set the start and end time for your charts in Application Options under Logon/Logoff.

Skip Weekends Check this to exclude weekends so the data looks continuous if weekends are included in the date range. If this is not checked there will be a big gap of empty space on the chart for the weekend when the market is closed.

Pullback Bar This applies to the Professional Version when using Bid/Ask charts.

Session Day Bar This applies to the Professional Version.

Draw Value Rng This applies to the Professional Version.

Cont Value Rng This applies to the Professional Version.

Draw B/A Rng This applies to the Professional Version.