Chart Trading
Trading from a chart is one of the most popular approaches by discretionary traders. You can see price movements along with your indicators, and recognize where appropriate levels will be for price action. Visual chart trading keeps pace with your needs and you can intuitively drag and drop order onto your chart. It can always be moved to another level if desired. Entire entry and/or exit strategies, like single orders, may also be dropped onto a chart.
Understanding Chart Trading
The Chart Trading Panel allows placing manual orders directly from a chart. The chart is cursor-sensitive, so right-clicking on the chart will create an order at the price level you clicked on. Orders can be also dragged and dropped directly to a specific price on the chart.
You can send single orders and entire strategies using the methods described above. MultiCharts supports simple single orders, One-Cancels-Other order groups (OCO), as well as automated entry and exit strategies. The Entry Automation and Exit Automation strategies can be applied by drag-and-drop or by right-clicking to individual orders, and entire positions.
Orders can be changed or cancelled by right-clicking them and choosing the appropriate option in the shortcut menu or from the Chart Trading Panel itself. Strategy levels (such as profit target and stop loss) can also be easily changed and moved around. Strategy names are shown on the appropriate levels, showing where the orders came from.
Active orders are shown in a bright color, while dependent inactive orders (wait for the active order to be filled before becoming active) are shown in transparent colors. Changing the size, or the price, of the parent order will automatically recalculate and update the dependent orders.
The Risk Management Mode of Chart Trading allows to set an offset in ticks, equity percent or currency, and MultiCharts will calculate the price of exit orders and place them together with the entry. Press the Risk Mgmt button to switch to this mode.
Show/Hide Chart Trading Panel
To show/hide Chart Trading Panel, click the Chart Trading Panel button at the top-right corner of the chart.
Full and Compact Modes
To switch to Full/Compact Mode, click the corresponding button at the top of the Chart Trading Panel.
Selecting Broker
To select a broker, click the arrow on the Broker Connection button and select a broker in drop-down menu.
Connecting / Disconnecting Broker Profile
When a broker is selected, click the Broker Connection button to connect or disconnect it.
Selecting Account
Select the account number in the Account Selector box .
PnL and Current Position
Current Position and Profit and Loss are indicated in the PnL and Current position box on the Chart Trading Panel and on the PnL Marker on the chart. Positive value (profit) is colored green, negative value (loss) is colored red.
Profit and Loss can be indicated in:
ticks , percent
and dollars
.
To change indication type, click the PnL and Current position box. Current Ask and Bid prices are indicated below. On the chart the Profit and Loss can be also indicated in:
Dollars , Ticks
, Percent
.
Click the PnL Marker to change indication type.
Current Position is marked with red or blue color. Long position is colored blue. Short position is colored red.
One-Click Order Placing
Chart Trading Panel provides the opportunity of one-click order placing.
Buy or Sell Market orders can be sent by pressing Buy Mkt and Sell Mkt buttons. Buy Ask, Buy Bid & Sell Ask, Sell Bid buttons send buy and sell limit orders at ask and bid prices respectively.
Place Order
Place Order menu allows you to place Stop, Limit and Stop-Limit orders as well as to automate certain methods of entering or exiting positions (see Orders and Strategies). It’s perfect for avoiding repetitive tasks, increasing your productivity and focusing on trading. Automation is especially useful when you need to apply an order pair quickly.
Place Order menu strategies give you competitive advantage over other traders: they allow you to exit the position faster than others. They also reduce the risk of two orders execution and would be especially useful for traders who use pyramiding strategies. Each strategy is an OCO group – if one order is filled, the other is canceled.
Orders and Entry Strategies are shown as icons on the Chart Trading Panel and can be easily applied to the chart. You can visually change the order levels, which saves a lot of time when managing your orders.
The icons are rearranged automatically: the last used icon is displayed in the top left corner of the menu.
To expand or collapse the Place Order menu, use the Expand/Collapse buttons.
To scroll icons in the Place Order menu, use the Scroll buttons.
To select Exit Strategies Average Open Position Price calculation mode:
- Select File in the main menu, click Preferences, select the Trading tab.
- Enable the Received from broker button to use the price received from broker or the Calculated based on order(s) execution price button to use the price calculated by MultiCharts based on entry order(s) execution price.
Exit Orders Management
Exit strategies applied to an open position change the number of contracts according to the current position size.
Exit strategies applied to active orders do not change number of contracts regardless of the open position size (do not "jump" onto the active position after the parent order was filled). They remain active and keep protecting orders that were generated by the parent order.
Number of contracts for exit strategies applied to the open position changes taken into account strategies applied to filled orders and their effect on the overall position. In other words, strategies applied to the position protect the remainder that is not protected by strategies applied to individual orders.
If a position was opened by an order that has an exit strategy attached from a flat position, then this strategy is applied to the entire position and "protects" it (see Example 2 below).
Exit strategies applied to positions and strategies applied to orders are visually different on both on the chart and in the DOM: exits strategies applied to positions have "p" letter to the left of the number of contracts.
- Open position is -1 contract.
- Sell limit order for 1 contract is sent to broker.
- Profit Target exit strategy is attached to the sell limit order.
- Sell limit order is filled. Profit Target becomes active. Open position is -2 contracts. Profit Target size is 1 (attached to the order, not the position).
- Sell market order for 2 contracts is sent to broker.
- Sell market order is filled. Open position is -4 contracts. Profit Target size is 1.
- Open position is flat.
- Buy market order for 100 contracts with a Master Strategy auto attached to it is sent to broker.
- Buy market order is filled. Master Strategy becomes active. Open position is +100 contracts. Master Strategy size is 100.
- Buy stop order for 200 contracts is sent to broker.
- Buy Stop order is filled. Open position is +300 contracts. Master Strategy size is 300 (protects entire position since the position was opened by an order that has an exit strategy attached from a flat position).
- Open position is +50 contracts.
- Buy market order for 100 contracts with a Master Strategy auto attached to it is sent to broker.
- Buy market order is filled. Master Strategy becomes active. Open position is +150 contracts. Master Strategy size is 100 (attached to the order, not the position).
- Buy stop order for 200 contracts is sent to broker.
- Buy Stop order is filled. Open position is +300 contracts. Master Strategy size is 300(attached to the position).
- Open position is +10 contracts.
- Stop-Loss #1 exit strategy is applied to the open position. Stop-Loss #1 size is 10.
- Buy stop order for 5 contracts is sent to broker.
- Stop-Loss #2 exit strategy is applied to the buy stop order. Stop-Loss #2 size is 5.
- Buy stop order is filled. Stop-Loss #2 becomes active. Open position is +15 contracts. Stop-Loss #1 size is 10. Stop-Loss #2 size is 5.
- Buy market order for 10 contracts is sent to the broker.
- Buy market order is filled. Open position is +25 contracts. Stop-Loss #1 size becomes 20 (attached to the position). Stop-Loss #2 size is 5 (attached to the order, not the position).
OCO-Orders
One Cancels Other (OCO) orders are the price orders sent in a group. When any of OCO orders is filled or partially filled, the system cancels or reduces size of other orders in this OCO-group.
All Entry Strategies are placed with OCO-orders.
There are two types of OCO-groups in MultiCharts: Native and Emulated.
Native OCO-group is used when the broker’s API supports OCO-groups. In this case all OCO orders are sent to the broker directly and unfilled OCO orders will be cancelled by the broker.
Emulated OCO-group means that all OCO orders will be sent to the broker, but once one of them is filled, other orders from this OCO group will be cancelled by MultiCharts. In this case, when one of the OCO orders is filled, MultiCharts will send a command to cancel or reduce size of the second OCO order to the broker.
All OCO-orders of the same group will have the same OCO-ID. You may check it in the Orders tab of the Order and Position Tracker window.
Orders and Strategies
Place Order and Exit Strategy menu allows you to place orders with just one click. Here is the list of orders and exit strategies you can use on the Chart Trading Panel:
Setting Order Quantity
Set order quantity by one of the following methods:
- Type in order quantity in Order Quantity box
in Chart Trading Panel.
- Click the Trading Calculator button
.
Calculator automatically increases the current trade size setting by one, e.g. if you had 1 in order quantity field, calculator would automatically make it 2.
You can modify the number of contracts by pressing +1, +2, +5 etc. buttons. The Zero button resets the number of contracts to zero.
Buttons on the right side of the calculator contain 6 last values.
You may set this number of contracts by pressing those buttons. To apply the modifications click OK, to cancel the modifications click Cancel.
Setting Time in Force
To set time in force of the order, use the Time in Force box in Chart Trading Panel.
- DAY – Good for one day
- GTC – Good-Til-Cancelled
- GTD – Good-Til-Date
- IOC – Immediate or Cancel Order
- FOK – Fill or Kill Orders
Order Modification
Order modification allows adjusting price level and changing the quantity of the order that has not been filled yet.
Adjusting price levels
To modify order price, drag the order marker on the chart and drop it to the desired price level.
When you drag the order with the mouse, it shows the difference between the actual position of the cursor and Bid or Ask price while you hold left button.
If you move the order somewhere between Bid and Ask on the price scale, it shows you current spread value changing dynamically.
To cancel the price level adjustment, press Esc before releasing left mouse button.
To modify the length of the line connecting order marker and price label on the price scale see Chart Trading Settings.
Changing Quantity
Change quantity of the order by one of the following methods:
- Right-click the order marker on the chart to see the shortcut menu, select Change Quantity and select the quantity.
- Click on volume value on order marker on the chart and modify the quantity in Trading Calculator (see Trading Calculator).
Cancelling Orders
Cancel separate threads or the order/strategy completely by one of the following methods:
- Click on the Close button on order/strategy marker.
- Right-click the order marker on the chart to see the shortcut menu and select Cancel Order.
To cancel multiple orders at a time orders use Cancel Asks, Cancel Bids and Cancel All buttons.
The Cancel Asks button cancels all pending buy orders. The Cancel Bids button cancels all pending sell orders. The Cancel All button cancels all pending orders.
Close Position
Close the position by one of the following methods:
- Right-click the order marker on the chart to see the shortcut menu and click Close Position.
- Click on the Close button on Chart Trading Panel.
- Click on the Close button on the position marker.
Closing the current position cancels all pending orders.
Reverse Position
Reverse the position by one of the following methods:
- Right-click the order marker on the chart to see the shortcut menu to call context menu and select Reverse Position.
- Click the Reverse button on Chart Trading Panel.
- Click the Reverse button at the right side of position marker on the chart.
Reverse closes the current position with market order, cancels all pending orders and sends market order to open the position in opposite direction for the same number of contracts.
Chart Trading Settings
To configure Chart Trading settings:
- Open Format Chart Trading window by one of the following methods:
- Right-click on the chart to see the shortcut menu, then click Format Chart Trading.
- Right-click on the Chart Trading Panel to see the shortcut menu, then click Format Chart Trading.
- Click the Format tab in the main menu and then click Chart Trading.
- Select General Settings tab:
- Show Open Positions – enables/disables active positions indication on the chart.
- Show Historical Orders – enables/disables historical orders indication on the chart.
- Show Active orders – enables/disables active orders indication on the chart.
- Show Trade Panel – shows/hides Trade Panel.
- Show Best Bid & Best Ask – enables/disables indication of Best Bid & Best Ask in Trade Panel.
- Show Bid & Ask Spread – enables/disables indication of Bid & Ask Spread in Trade Panel.
- Stop Limit Offset – allows setting default Stop Limit offset with spin-box.
- Show PnL in – allows selection of PnL indication type (Currency, Point, Percent).
- Show Spread in – allows selection of spread indication type (Currency, Point, Percent).
- Use as Default – saves the settings as Default. All subsequently created charts will use the same settings.
Appearance
To configure visual parameters of Chart Trading orders:
- Open Format Chart Trading window by one of the following methods:
- Right-click on the chart to see the shortcut menu, then click Format Chart Trading.
- Right-click on the Chart Trading Panel to see the shortcut menu, then click Format Chart Trading.
- Click the Format tab in the main menu, then click Chart Trading.
- Select Historical Orders tab or Active Orders and Positions tab.
Historical Orders
Select one of the standard 40 colors from the palette box, or click Other to use custom colors for the key components of historical orders markers.
Change the style and the size of the components using 28 custom vertical and horizontal arrows and 7 custom sizes.
To configure order markers size you should change Status Line font size: right-click on the chart to see the shortcut menu, click Format Window, select the Status Line tab and modify Font Size.
To hide Price and Type and/or Quantity and Direction information for historical orders set style to Invisible in the corresponding lines.
Active Orders and Positions
Select one of the standard 40 colors from the palette box, or click Other to create custom colors for the Active Orders and Positions.
Change style and weight of connecting lines using 5 custom line types and 7 custom weights.
Connecting Line Length modifies the length of the line connecting order marker and price label on the price scale.
Default Active Order Colors
Order/Strategy | Color | Red | Green | Blue |
---|---|---|---|---|
Breakeven Strategy | Yellow | 255 | 255 | 0 |
Breakout Down/Fade Strategy | Dark Cyan | 0 | 139 | 139 |
Breakout Strategy | Medium Purple | 147 | 112 | 219 |
Breakout Up/Fade Strategy | Sienna | 160 | 82 | 45 |
Buy/Sell Limit | Lime | 30 | 255 | 0 |
Buy/Sell Stop | Sienna | 160 | 82 | 45 |
Buy/Sell Stop Limit | Magenta | 255 | 0 | 255 |
Fade Strategy | Olive Drab | 107 | 142 | 35 |
Stop Loss Strategy | Maroon | 128 | 0 | 0 |
Profit Target Strategy | Green | 0 | 255 | 0 |
Trailing Stop Strategy | Orange | 255 | 165 | 0 |
Accessing Performance Report
To access a Strategy Performance Report:
- Apply a strategy to a chart.
- In the menu select View then click Strategy Performance Report.
To access a Trading Performance Report:
- Connect a Broker Profile.
- Make sure that the chart shows historical trades.
- In the menu select View then click Trading Performance Report.