Hi,
I’m looking for a way to show each tick on a linear time scale i.e. a “normal” graph of price vs time without any bars, candlesticks etc getting in the way. As a relative new-comer I’m puzzled why all the trading platforms I’ve seen so far insist on adding these layers of obscurity over the top of a simple graph, which is all I want to see.
The “tick charts” I’ve seen don’t have a linear time scale because the x-axis is in ticks, not time. So they are also not what I am looking for either.
I would like to be able to zoom in and out between minutes and months and just see the graph scale in and out in a predictable way. Just like any other graph, in other words.
Is there an indicator that will do this?
Thanks,
Use MT4 and just set up a template the way you like it. That is time vs price.
AFAIK MT4 only has three types of chart available; bar, candlestick or closing price graph. None of these are what I am looking for. What I am looking for is a non-segmented graph.
The closing price graph shows no information about what is happening between each time segment. Bars and candlesticks are just a summary of what is happening in a time segment.
I thought that a “template” was just a way of saving the colours, chart mode, indicators etc.
Your going to have to give me an example of what you are looking for. It looks like you want a second by second graph of the tick data. That’s still a segmented time period though. If 1 min charts are too segmented for you then I would love to have your spreads to make money in less time. You can see the tick by tick charts in mt4 when you hit new order. Its a much more real time tick data view which is probably what you are looking for.
Yes, that’s the sort of chart, assuming it really is on a linear time scale.
The difference is that I am looking for something that can also zoom out to longer time frames. What I would expect to see then is a noisy graph.
I would like to give an example but haven’t been able to find one yet. Still looking. I was hoping to find an indicator I could use.
Here’s a summary of the graph properties if it helps make it clear:
[ul]
[li]Time on the X axis
[/li][li]Price on the Y access
[/li][li]Zooming in shows individual price changes (ticks) as steps on the graph
[/li][li]When zoomed out so that more than one tick appears on a pixel width, then a vertical 1-pixel line is drawn showing the highest-to-lowest value
[/li][/ul]
Your problem is that there are so many movements within a minute that it would look almost exactly like a 1 Minute chart.
There is stuff you could do this with back testing but I don’t know about real time. Tick data is available going back and you could use this to draw some graphs but tick data varies per broker and even per computer because if you computer is slower it will get less tick movements. I doubt the micro level movements within 1 minute would yield any useful information because of the cost of spread.
If I find anything I will let you know.
Actually, I did get some where near what I was looking for by selecting a one minute OHLC bar chart and zooming out. But the amount I can zoom out is somewhat limited.
I would expect a simple price vs time graph to look quite similar between brokers, unless I was looking at timescales < minute. Certainly better than candle or OHLC charts which look completely different between brokers simply because of the time zone the broker operates in, especially on the H4 charts.
Perhaps it would help if I explained why I’m looking for such a chart. I’m just learning Forex and I’ve been busily reading up on it, subscribing to free courses, watching videos, practicing on a demo account etc. I am having difficulty understanding why candlesticks and OHLC bars are necessary. I come from an engineering background and I am used to seeing various waveforms and other data plotted against time. To me, candlesticks just seem to add a layer of error an obfuscation to the price chart. I’ve even seen videos explaining how arbitrary the time slices are and how error prone using candlesticks etc is. And I agree.
I have a theory. Trading existed long before computers were invented and so candlesticks and OHLC bars were a great way to summarise trading time-frames in a time when graphs had to be drawn by hand and trading happened withing predictable hours of the day. When computers came along programmers simply worked with what traders of the day wanted and understood, which was candlesticks and OHLC bars. Suggesting that price action could be viewed directly was probably too much of a future-shock. And so it stuck.
