I’m curious, how often do you wipe your charts clean, if ever?
When you start the day or week, do you start with a clean chart or do you leave all your analysis there to review at a later date, like a journal?
Personally I find that clearing my charts occasionally gives me a new perspective, and I tend to see things I didn’t see previously. It’s almost invigorating for me.
I clean them every Sunday morning and re mark the chart , helps me look deeper into the moves and give a good idea of the coming week
I download the chart for my journal. I take a pre- and post-trade picture for my journal entry.
This way, I can see what I was thinking, as well as what came to fruition.
After that, I wipe the chart clean.
But I can understand why it’s invigorating. It’s like, “Full speed ahead to the next trade!”
I suppose it also depends on your strategy and style of trading.
When I open up a clean chart I like to go through all the timeframes, M, W, D, 4H & 1H, and plot out all the SR levels. It’s a bit of work and the higher TF’s don’t change very often which is probably why I don’t do it as much as I should.
Great question.
I find it helpful also to wipe the slate clean so to speak. I even go a step further sometimes, which you might find a little silly.
I only use one screen when I trade. And sometimes I’ll zoom the chart out a little and stand back about three meters. This allows me to look at the “big picture.”
I also find it helpful to erase trend lines after the market reverses. I’m like you. I just can’t stand to have a cluttered chart!
Not silly at all, it’s important to look at the big picture.
It’s like that cluttered room in your house. You walk in and all you can focus on is all the clutter, it bogs you down. Finally, when you clean it and organize everything you can sit in it, relax and look out the window at the world.
I clear my charts every week. When I began trading, my mentor suggested this to me and since then, I have been clearing them every week.
I thought that I would bump this topic up since it’s been a few years. The recent topic about how much time we spend on charts reminded me of this.
My habits have not changed much since my OP, I still clear all my charts occasionally and start fresh. Levels can change or become obsolete over time and you tend to work with or around them and don’t even realize. Personally, I feel it is a healthy trading habit to get into that helps keep you focused on what’s happening right now.
I think I always keep my charts clean except for a couple of indicators. but all the drawable things like trendlines or fibo retracements I usually remove right after the analysis.
But you hit the nail in the head with the need to get different perspectives on the charts.
You can also use several devices for analysis. Sometimes PC platform and mobile app charts hit differently and you can see something that you didn’t notice on the Pc version or vice versa.
depends my support and resistant level on high time frames like1w or 1d i keep them and some times 4h the price turns to that levels ,cause im swing trader is useful to me …
Only thing which I keep on my charts are main Price Channels on daily, weekly and monthly time frames.also most of the times I adjust my charting software so that it shows weekly and monthly channels only on 1h+ time frames.