Multiple (Mixed) Periodicity Charts

Related: Mixed Periodicity Data (MPD) Indicator Q&A: How do I mix multiple periodicities in a chart?

You can now mix intraday periodicities within Traditional Charts. You may add as many instruments as you like to a chart, each instrument having it's own periodicity. Any indicator added to a chart can then be attached to any instrument/periodicity combination. For instance, you may have a 1-minute candle chart of INTC. You can then click on the "Add Instrument" button on the chart toolbar, and choose INTC again, but this time choose "5-minute" as the periodicity, and you can choose to draw this INTC as a bar. You'll then have 5-minute INTC bars overlaying 1-minute INTC candles. You can drag the instruments into their own chart window pane, or overlay them in the same pane. Both sets of bars/candles will update dynamically, tick by tick. Now, when adding a new indicator to this chart, you can choose whether to attach it to the 5-minute INTC or the 1-minute INTC. When you click on the "Add Indicator" button in the chart toolbar (or just hit Insert on your keyboard), you'll see an "Associated Instrument" choice in the lower left corner of the Add Indicator window. The 5-minute INTC will show up as "INTC(AUTO:0:5)" while the 1-minute INTC will show up as "INTC(AUTO:0:1)". The last number in parenthesis represents the periodicity of the instrument (The first two represent the exchange and session). Choose the instrument/periodicity combination to which you'd like to add the indicator before adding it.

Chart Example: 1-minute candles and 5-minute bars of INTC, along with Price Bands on each, representing bands between the 10 and 30 period Moving Averages.

When switching the periodicity of a chart that contains instruments of multiple periodicities, any instrument whose periodicity matched the original periodicity of the chart (before changing) will also be changed. If the periodicity of the instrument did not match the periodicity of the original chart, then that instrument's periodicity will not be changed. Using this example, if we had a 1-minute chart containing 1-minute candles of INTC and 5-minute bars of INTC, and the periodicity of the chart was changed to 3-minutes, then the 1-minute candles would change to 3-minute candles, while the 5-minute bars would remain 5-minute bars.

You now see the periodicity in parenthesis next to the ticker symbol throughout the chart, in the form TICKER (periodicity). For example, the 5-minute INTC bars would show up as "INTC (5)". You can identify which indicator is associated with which instrument/periodicity combination with this notation.

You may the same symbol multiple times to a chart. You could also add 30-minute candles of some other instrument, e.g. MSFT, to the same chart, or a 15-minute connected line of INDU. Each time you add an instrument, you can specify a unique periodicity for that instrument. In that sense, the chart has a periodicity, and each instrument has its own periodicity. If you are not interested in using multiple periodicity charts, do not let this confuse you. Investor/RT will operate just as it has before if you do not elect to add instruments with periodicities that vary from the periodicity of the chart. By default, the periodicity displayed in the "Add Instrument" window will be the same as the periodicity of the underlying chart.