| Custom Charts Help Page | |
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General Overview:
Custom Charts was designed to provide traders with the tools to make your own customized charts, using a multitude of studies
and parameters set by you, the user. There are over 40 technical analysis studies at your disposal. This support page is
not meant to be a tutorial to those studies. There is a "studies help
" page that describes the studies. This is meant to be a tutorial for the program itself.
We recommend that you read over the entire help page before getting started with building charts. There are several features
to this program that you may or may not want to use, and reading the tutorial will save you time in the end.
Detailed Overview:
The Custom Charts program is broken down into three sections: Data Options,
Chart Options and Studies.
Data Options:
In the data options, you enter the commodity, the contract type, time frame and date.
Enter Symbol - The symbol defines the commodity contract you wish to plot. The symbol is made up of three parts; the commodity code, the expiration month, and the expiration year. The first two characters of the symbol are the commodity code. The commodity code is a 1 or 2 digit reference to the commodity (example: DJ is Dow Jones, S is soybeans). If you do not know the code of the commodity you want to enter, click on the drop down arrow to the box below (with the defaul "currencies" selected) and select it from the list. The second part of the commodity code is the contract month. This is signified by a single letter, representing the expiration month of the contract.
Contract months - {F G H J K M N Q U V X Z} - {Jan ... Dec} respectively. The third and final part of the symbol is the year of expiration. This is a 2 digit abbreviation of the year of expiration. 1999 is 99, 2000 is 00, 2001 is 01, 2002 is 02. You do not need the expiration year for a continuation chart (explained below). To get a cash contract use Y for the contract month and 00 for the contract year.
Contract Type and Time Frame - The box to the right of the "enter symbol" box allows you to select the contract type or time frame. There are three basic contract types:
The Daily, Weekly and Monthly are the time period of the plot. You may also produce intraday charts with Custom Charts. Intraday charts will only work with a specific Contract Chart, and we do not carry the intraday prices historically. You have the option of selecting a 5 minute, 10, 15, 30, 45, hourly, and 90 minute chart.
Chart Options:
The Chart Options section deals with the size and density of the chart, scaling features, and
price and volume display.
Chart Size - The chart size drop down menu allows you to increase/decrease the size of the chart to match your monitor. This does not affect the density or time frame of the chart, just the actual pixel size as it appears on your screen. The default size is "612 x 360" pixels.
Density - The density drop down menu controls the number of divisions on the date strip, or the number of periods on the charts. Here is a list of the divisors:
Divisions represent trading days, weeks, months, or minutes, depending on what type of chart you have selected. 270 divisions on a daily chart is one year in length.
Prices On - "Prices On" will display the price of the chart as you run your mouse over the chart. This feature will only work in a one window plot (i.e. if you add a secondary study, you will not be able to use this feature). The first set of numbers displayed is the High Low Close (or Open High Low Close, if you do not have an overlay). RES indicates the results for the overlay study you have selected.
Text Files - You can create text files using the "Prices On" feature of custom charts. If you change Prices On to either Decimal File or Integer File, when you click "create chart" the output will be ascii text, instead of a graphical chart. The output can be saved and imported into most spread sheets. To get the complete history of a contract, enter in the symbol, contract month and contract year. If you select a "daily nearest", the output will be about two years long. To go back further in time, save that first file and make a note of the earliest day of data that appears in the file. Then repeat the process, but this time change the "end date" to be the day before the first day of data from your last file. Remember, the "end date" is the last day of data to appear in a chart or text file. You can repeat until you have the amount of data that you want.
You will need Netscape 3.x or above or Internet Explorer 4.x or above to view the prices.
Expiration Mode - Expiration mode lest you define when we roll over the contracts for nearest and continuation charts. Last Week will roll the contracts the week before they expire. Last Month will roll the contracts the start of the month of expiration. X days will roll the contract X number of days before the contract expires. This field will only come into effect if the contract has actually expired.
Scaling - The scaling feature changes the scaling on the y-axis of the chart. Linear scaling will calculate the most intelligent scale using the high, the low and a series of acceptable divisors for possible scales. The Logarithmic scale uses logarithmic scaling instead of the linear scaling. No scaling removes the logical divisors and takes the highest point on the chart, the lowest point on the chart, and the number of divisors to create the y-axis.
Latest Date - Latest date will allow you to pull today's intraday data into the latest date bar. For example, a daily chart without latest date selected will have prices through the previous close. With latest date selected, you will get today's open, the highest high so far in ecurrent trading as the high, the lowest low so far in current trading as the low, and the latest price as the close for today's bar. This is the default selection. For the latest date feature to work, you need to select a specific contract month and year. (i.e. SP won't give you the latest date, but SPU2 will) After 5pm C.S.T. the Latest Date feature will include a bar for tomorrow if the contract has opened for night trading.
Grids On - Grids On selected will plot tighter grid lines within each box in the chart. The default is unselected.
Thin Lines - Thin lines selected will reduce the pixel size of the chart. This will create a sharper plot, adding more definition to the bars, but it may be harder for some individuals to see. The default is unselected.
Studies:
We have 40 studies available for plotting on a chart, starting with the OHLC. You can create up
to two plot studies with two overlays. We have descriptions of all the studies used in custom charts
in the "studies help
" page in our support section.
After creating a chart, the study names appear in the upper right hand corner of the chart. These relate to the colors on the chart from left to right as red, green and blue. (i.e. if you selected the ADX indicator as your study, ADX/-DI/+DI would appear in the chart with ADX being red, the -DI being green and the +DI being blue) The results of the study will also appear in the Java Mouse Over Box (if you have "prices on" selected) at the top of the chart. The numbers after RES are the results of your study (also going from left to right in relation to the name as it appears on the chart).
Custom Parameters - For every study we offer there is a default set of parameters. For example, when you select a moving average, the default days are [9, 18, 40]. However, we offer you the ability to change these parameters to meet your own trading needs. To the right of each drop down study and overlay box is a series of three empty parameter boxes. You can change one or all of the parameters for a study by entering in new numbers into the parameter boxes. Each number you enter in a custom parameter box will overwrite the default number associated with the corresponding argument of the study. So if you wanted to change the above moving average example to a [20, 40] day moving average, you would enter in 20 in the first box, 40 in the second box, and 0 in the third box (this will give a null result for that parameter). If you leave a box blank, the system will use the default parameter for that box.