Chart Properties

Just as every chart analysis is governed by the individual preferences of each trader, the chart properties like colors, fonts and other optical settings can be adjusted to personal likings. You can use the chart properties and the styles and templates functions to do the following:

• Adapt the charts to personal color and font preferences
• Optimize charts for usage in print or web media
• Re-use the settings for other charts
• Enhance the recognition factor of your work in publications
• Define and use templates for the chart configuration
• Define and use Style properties for Charts and other documents like Scanners, Watchlists or Portfolios.

Setting the Chart Properties

As "Chart Properties", the following options should be included here:

• You can edit the chart properties. To do this, open the toolbox and click on Chart in the upper region of the property inspector to see the parameters for axes, grid, legend etc. In case of strategies, more settings are available.
• Some settings of the symbols are also reflected in the chart. To access these settings, click on the symbol in the upper region of the property inspector. The parameters for volume and history length are available.
• You can set up the optical chart properties by using styles (pre-set or your own). If you have saved templates, you can also apply those to new charts.

Displaying the Properties of Selected Items

When you select an item in Tradesignal, its properties are displayed in the toolbox. For example, when you click on a chart, the chart properties are displayed; when you click on a symbol, the symbol properties are displayed.

This is the default setting. However, you can change this by changing the setting for Automatically show properties when an item is selected in the Advanced area of the Tradesignal Options.

Saving, Restoring and Resetting Default Settings

On top of the chart properties in the properties manager, to the right, you can find two important buttons.

• Disk button (Save as Default) - Click to save your current settings as the new default settings.
• Restore button (Restore Default Settings, circled arrow) - Click to reset all settings to the default settings.

Not all settings can be saved like this:

• Some chart settings are done in the Tradesignal Options, like the history length, the default chart type etc.
• The standard period and other user interface settings are entered in the Tradesignal Options.

Some settings also do not make much sense as a default, like the value for a stop line.

To restore the original default settings of your Tradesignal installation, click on the Restore Default Settings button in the Tradesignal Options.

Chart Properties in the Toolbox

Beside the color selectors for the background, date and value axis, you can also find parameters for the grid and the chart legend.

Chart

Font - Here you can select a font type (Tahoma, Arial...), font style (bold, italic...) and font size. Click on the entry to open the dialog in which you can edit the values.

Auto-Hide Scales - If activated, the scales are hidden if the chart is displayed in a very small size.

Background - Open a dialog in which you can set a background color. You can choose between solid colors or gradients (vertical or horizontal). To create a gradient, you need to select two colors. For each of them, a color palette is available.

Show Gaps - Select whether times without trading should be invisible or visible in the chart.

History Length - Enter the length of the price history here. The maximum length in Tradesignal is 500000 data points, which effectively means the length is limited by your data provider.

Refresh on Historic Updates - Set to Yes if the indicators/strategies should be recalculated when changing the data history.

Min. Referenced Bars - Enter the minimum number of bars that should be used for calculating the values of indicators and strategies.

Target Cursor Style - Here you can edit the style of the target cursor, Thin Line or Whole Column.

Date Axis

For the date axis, you can set the background color and font properties. In addition, you can also set whether the scrollbar should be active. In Tradesignal 5.6 and above you can toggle between the panoramic scrollbar and the normal one or adjust the height of the panoramic scrollbar.

Value Axis

For the value axis, you can set the background color and font properties. In addition, you can set the axis to invisible to have more room for your graph.

Grid

A grid can be set up in the background of the chart. You can define the grid properties like line art, style (points, vertical, horizontal...), and mode of the grid (plain or every second column colored). You can also set the background and column colors.

Legend

Here you can define the font settings and the way symbols, indicators and strategies are to be displayed in the legend. The available parameters depend on the selected chart type. You also have the option to display net and percent change (relative to previous bar).

Percent Performance

This allows you to set global percent performance properties which are used by all symbols in your chart. Percent performance charts allow you to easily compare the relative performance of multiple symbols.

Risk Order Appearance

If strategies are applied to the graph, you can define the optical qualities of the trading system signals here. You can set the colors of the arrows (pointing at events in the curve) and also define how much information should be displayed for the trades.

Symbol Properties in the Toolbox

Click on the symbol name on top of the property inspector in the toolbox to edit the symbol properties. Depending on the symbol in the chart, you can do the following:

• Display the trading volume and define colors for rising/falling
• Define the colors of candles, bars etc. in the chart
• Set other properties, e.g. "Open Interests" for Futures

Standard Properties of Stocks in Charts

In the property inspector of the displayed stock you can find the following parameters.

Scale Properties

Scale Align - Select whether scales should be displayed left, right, or left and right.

Scale Labels - Select whether the current price should be displayed as a special label on the scale.

Legend - Here you can set the legend (top left of the chart) to either visible or hidden (invisible).

Volume Properties

Volume Bars - Select whether the volume should be displayed as a forest (histogram) chart on the bottom of the chart.

Rising / Falling Color - Here you can set the colors for the volume bars.

Instrument Properties

Depending on the chart type, additional parameters may be available.

Display Units - Here you can change the display units, e.g. with how many decimal places or fractions the prices should be displayed. The default display unit will be read from the symbol properties. You can customize the default display unit via sessions.

Currency - By default, the currency related to the exchange on which the symbol is traded will be displayed; you can change the default currency to your preferred one.

Data Quality - Displays whether the data is realtime or delayed.

Exchange - Displays the exchange at which the symbol is traded.

FID - Here you can set which fields (Last, Bid, Ask) are used for chart calculation.

Unit - Here you can change the unit, e.g. Barrel, Bushel etc. Whether this option is available depends on the used data provider.

Percent Performance

In this group are percent performance properties for a specific symbol. This allows you to enable it only for certain symbols.

[Chart type] Properties

In an additional area, you can find parameters depending on the chart type, e.g. bullish and bearish color settings.

Styles and Templates

Tradesignal offers two functions for saving and re-using settings for the contents and display of charts.

• Use styles to save the optical settings only.
• Use templates to save optical settings as well as indicators, strategies and history length. Even the symbol is saved too, but only applied to empty charts.

Apply Styles and Templates

To apply a style, click on the Styles button in the toolbar to open a list of pre-defined styles. Here you can find the pre-defined styles as well as your own styles. Select a style.

If the default settings of chart tools were changed in the properties and saved for a style, applying this style changes the default properties of these tools. However, this only lasts while the style is applied to that chart. When using the chart tools in a new chart, the usual user-defined settings are applied.

To apply a template, click on the Template button in the toolbox. Then open the context menu of a template and choose Apply.

Save Styles and Templates

To save a style, click the Styles button to open the button menu and select Save Style from the list. A dialog opens in which you can enter the name and description of the template which will later appear in the list.

To save a template, open the context menu of the symbol chart legend and select Save Template. Alternatively, click on the small icon in the Format area in the toolbar. A dialog opens in which you have to enter a name.

For more information, see the chapter Styles and the chapter Templates.