 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Tip of the Day
Traditional Chart Shortcuts
See Also: Technical Indicator Adjustment
Today's tip will cover some hidden features of Traditional Charts. Most of the tips involve shortcut keys for accessing certain charting features.
Traditional
Chart
Zoom In, Zoom Out - The Up and Down Arrows are used to increase and decrease the Pixels Per Bar. The down arrow actually increases the pixels per bar by one pixel, and conversely, the up arrow decreases the pixels per bar by one pixels. So if you would like to zoom in on your chart, simply hit the down arrow a few times. And if you would like to zoom out on your chart, hit the up arrow a few times. If you want to expand or contract the chart spacing more quickly than one pixel at a time, hold down the shift key while pressing either the up or down arrow keys. The shift key tells Investor/RT to increase or decrease the pixel spacing four pixels at a time. Internally, the up arrow actually decreases the "Pixels per Bar" setting that can be found in the chart preferences by one pixel. The Down Arrow increases the pixels per bar by 1 pixel. The result is a zooming effect, in which the bars increase or decrease in size, and more bars enter or exit the left hand edge of the chart.
Zooming with mouse - You can zoom quickly using the mouse, by simply dragging the horizontal scale (along bottom of chart) to the left or right. Dragging to the right zooms out; dragging to the left zooms in.
Scrolling - You can scroll left or right in your chart window by just using the left and right arrows on your keyboard.
Scrolling Back in Time - The Right and Left Arrows can be used to scroll your chart forward or backward in time. The left arrow key scrolls one window into the past, while the right arrow keys scrolls one window forward. The Home and End keys also scroll the time to the most recent (right) position or oldest (left) position.
Change the Periodicity - If you'd like to change the periodicity of any chart, just bring the chart to front and start typing any number. The "Periodicity" control will appear with the number you typed already placed into the Intraday Bars groupbox. You can now click on any of the buttons on the left to switch to those periodicities (the buttons labeled simply with numbers represent number of minutes). You can also build your own customized periodicity by using the groupbox on the right. Once you've got your periodicity set up properly, just click "OK" or hit the "Enter" key on your keyboard and the chart will update with the new periodicity. There are a few shortcuts available with the Periodicity control. Type the D key to quickly switch to daily periodicity. Similarly, type W or M to switch to Weekly or Monthly. Type T to select the "Ticks Per Bar" intraday periodicity. Similarly, type "I", "R", "C", or "V" to select "Time Per Bar", "Range Per Bar", "Change Per Bars", or "Volume Per Bar". So if you're looking at a chart of any periodicity, and you want to switch it to daily, just type "1d". If you're looking at a 1 minute chart, and you want to switch it to a 13 minute chart, just type "13 Enter".
Cycling through Chart Periodicities - The Right and Left Arrows, as noted above are normally used to scroll the chart in time. However, if you hold down the ctrl key (option key if Macintosh) while pressing the left or right arrow keys, Investor/RT changes the periodicity of the chart in the sequence: tick, 1-min, 3-min, 5-min, 10-min, 15-min, 30-min, 60-min, Daily, Weekly, Monthly. For example, if you are looking at a daily chart, then one ctrl-right arrow changes to Weekly, another one takes you to Monthly, another to tick, 1-minute,…etc. If you start with a 5-minute chart, ctrl-left arrow changes the chart to 3-minute while ctrl-right arrow takes you to 10-minute.
Viewing Saved Charts - If you click the left and right arrows with the Shift key depressed, you will cycle through the saved Charts. The cycling order will be based on Alphabetical order of the chart titles in the "Open: Charts" Menu. Using the Shift-Right Arrow, you will cycle through the traditional charts in alphabetical order, while Shift-Left Arrow will take you through the charts in reverse alphabetical order.
Adding A Technical Indicator - The Insert Key on your keyboard brings up the "Add Technical Indicator" Window. On the Macintosh platform the "ins" key (insert) is the shifted Help key on Mac extended keyboards.
Change the Active Symbol/Instrument - If you'd like to change the active symbol in any chart, just bring the chart to front and start typing the new ticker symbol. A "Replace Instrument" will pop up, automatically scrolled to the ticker symbol best matching the sequence of characters you've typed so far. Once your symbol is selected, simply hit "Enter" and the chart will update to the new symbol. If the symbol doesn't exist in this list (and therefore has not yet been added to your Investor/RT database), just hit the Insert key on your keyboard, and a window will appear in which you can type and add your new ticker.
Adding A Symbol/Instrument (Windows Only) - The Shift-Insert Key combination on your keyboard brings up the "Add Instrument" Window.
Selecting A Chart Object - You can click on an object in a chart to select it. Objects include bar graphs, candlesticks, connected lines, technical indicators, etc. Objects change appearance slightly when selected. For instance, moving average lines will become slightly thicker when selected. If you have difficulty selecting an object, press the Tab key repeatedly until the object you want is selected. Once an object is selected, you can do several things with it. You can hit the "Delete" key to remove it from the chart (on the Macintosh platform, the "forward del key" is used. You can hit the "Enter" key to bring up the properties or preferences for that object, or you can drag and drop that object into another window pane, or drop it onto another pane title in order to place it into a new pane. When dragging and dropping technical indicators within a chart window, holding down the ctrl key while dropping the indicator causes the indicator to be duplicated in the new position. For example, if you have a MACD in its own pane and want to see what it would look like overlaid on the instrument pane, ctrl-drag and drop the MACD into the instrument pane. When you drop the MACD, it will now appear in both places. If the scaling appears off, it is because the two objects are sharing a single scale. In order to turn on multi-scaling, double-click in the Vertical Scale to bring up the scaling preferences, and check the "Use multiple scales as required" checkbox.
Chart Preferences - You can access the chart preferences window quickly by just double clicking or right clicking in the horizontal scale at the bottom of the chart. On the Macintosh platform, a "right click" is "control-click".
Vertical Scale Preferences - You can access the vertical scale preferences quickly by double clicking or right clicking in the vertical scale on the right side of the chart.
Miscellaneous Keyboard
Shortcuts - With a chart window in front, press the esc key to
close it. Press the enter key to edit the currently selected graph
element-if no element is selected, the update dialog for the first
instrument in the chart appears when the enter key is pressed. If the
slide show controller window is open, pressing the space bar advances to
the next chart in the slide show. This shortcut can be used even if the
slideshow is already advancing on its own. Additional Keyboard Shortcuts -
You can create your own shortcut key for any of the Traditional Chart
Toolbar functions (or any other toolbar for that matter). Simply go to
"Setup Preferences: Keyboard Shortcuts". First, specify the
shortcut key combination you would like to assign at top, for instance,
Shift-F2. Now, for the Action, select "Toolbar" and then
"Chart", and then select the toolbar function you would like to
assign to your shortcut key. Select Apply. You can also set shortcut keys
for adjusting the periodicity of the chart by choosing
"Periodicity" in the Action.
Creating Right Margin / Whitespace - If you would like to create some space between the current bar and the vertical scale, you can do this by shift-dragging the horizontal scale along the bottom of the chart to the left. Internally, this just increases the "Lookahead Period" which can be found in the chart preferences. The lookahead period dictates how many bars of white space will be left between the current bar and the scale. To remove this space, just shift drag the horizontal scale back to the left. This space can be used for things like horizontal reference line annotation, trendline projections, etc.
Adding Technical Indicators - The "Insert" key on your keyboard quickly invokes the "Add Technical Indicator" window. Once this window pops up, you can hit the first character of the indicator you wish to add. For instance, if you would like to add a MACD to your chart, simply hit "Insert", followed by "M", and then Enter. If your indicator is not the first one to start with that letter, keep hitting the letter until your indicator appears. Once your indicator appears, set your preferences and hit Enter to add it, or hit the Esc key to cancel the window.
Adjusting Technical Indicators - I have created already created a tutorial regarding this subject that I think you will find very helpful. You can find the
tutorial at:
http://www.linnsoft.com/tutorials/tiAdjustment.htm
Closing The Chart - Just hit the Esc key.
If a technical indicator or instrument is "selected" in the chart, the
first strike of the Esc key will just unselect that indicator or
instrument, and it will take a second strike of the Esc key to close the
chart.
Open A Chart - Hit Alt-1, then just start typing the name of the chart you would like to open until the name is selected, then hit Enter.
Cycling Through Open Charts - You can hold down the Ctrl-key while hitting Tab repeatedly to cycle through all your open windows. This is standard windows behavior but I thought some of you might not be aware of this as it is a very helpful feature you should become familiar with. Along the same lines, Alt-Tab cycles through open programs.
Download Data Into Chart - Hitting the
"space" key on your keyboard with a chart in focus will cause a download
for that chart. The green circular arrow button on the lower right hand corner of all charts also performs a download, or refresh, of your chart. It will download for the visible period in your chart.
Panning - Just drag any open space on the chart (excluding the scales) in any direction, and the chart will move along with your mouse. This feature was added in version 5.2.
Changing Vertical Scale Options - A small letter in the upper right corner of your vertical scale denotes which scaling option you have turned on. M for Manual, A for Automatic, and O for Instrument-Only Automatic. Click on this letter to cycle through the three options. Click on the O will change it to an A, clicking on the A will change it to an M, etc.
Scrolling Vertically - All windowpanes may be scrolled vertically by dragging the right half of the vertical scale up or down.
Stretching or Compacting Vertically - Drag the left half of the vertical scale up or down to compact or stretch the chart vertically. To stretch or compact the bottom edge of the chart, drag the lower half of the scale, to stretch or compact the upper edge, drag the upper half of the scale.
Dragging Indicators - You can drag and drop indicators from one windowpane to another by simply left mouse downing on them and dragging (while keeping the left mouse depressed). To drag an indicator into it's own windowpane, drag the indicator down and drop it into the horizontal scale. Indicators may be overlaid or in their own pane.
Adjusting the order of chart elements - You can adjust the order of chart elements by
ctrl-clicking in the vertical scale. This will adjust two things; it will adjust the order in which the elements are drawn into the windowpane. It will also adjust the order in which the elements are displayed in the pane title bar. So if one of your indicators is drawing behind your bars and you want to bring it to the front, try
ctrl-clicking in the vertical scale until it comes to the front. If an element is not visible in the pane title feedback bar,
ctrl-click in the vertical scale until it is.
For more control over the order of chart elements,
shift-click in the vertical scale (or right-click on the pane title) to
bring up the "Order Chart Pane Elements" window. This window gives
you complete flexibility with respect to the order of the elements/objects
in the pane.
Maximizing A Chart Window Pane - Double-click on the pane title bar to maximize a windowpane. Then double-click again to restore. Ctrl-Double-Click will make all panes equal size. Shift-Double-Click will give the instrument pane 66% of the chart window, and share the rest of the space among the remaining panes.
Double-Clicking = Right-Clicking - In almost every situation that I mentioned double-clicking above, a right-click could have been substituted....