. . . more on Charts 

Above is a 5 Minute Candlestick Chart of Inter Corporation (INTC).  The Annotation is seen with a white background and blue text as seen in the preferences below.  This annotation shows the last price and the change.  

. . . more on Preferences 

• Text - Text to be displayed in the Annotation.  You can include RTL Tokens in your text, prefixed with percent signs (%), such as: %TICKER: High: %HI, Low: %LO, and that dynamic data will be show in your Annotation.

• Font - Font size and type used for the annotation.

• Last - Show the last price in the annotation.

• Bid - Show the bid price in the annotation.

• Ask - Show the ask price in the annotation.

• Change - Show the change in the annotation.

• User Data - User data is an editable text column which each symbol contains.  It can be added as a column to a quotepage and edited directly, or modified from the setup instruments window.

• Draw Border - Check this box if you would like a border drawn around the annotation box, in the same color as the text.

• Draw Background - If this option is checked, a background will be drawn in the background color specified, otherwise, the annotation background will be transparent, so bars and indicators can be seen through the annotation.

• Attach to bar - Check this box if you want your annotation tagged to a specific date and time.  If this box is unchecked, the annotation will be fixed in relation to the left side of the window, instead of fixed with relation to time.

• Draw Marker - Draw a marker on the bar for which the annotation is associated.

• Text/Border - Color of the annotation text and border (if applicable).

• Background - Color of the background rectangle for the annotation. (if applicable)

To enable more powerful diagnostic messaging during backtesting, the Annotation indicator (from IRT's charting system) has been added to the RTL language. The token is NOTE. The NOTE token is simply a way to output instrument specific values to the backtesting detail report. Typically, the NOTE token ( considered a "logical" token not an arithmetic one) could be added to an existing rule's signal, e.g.

NOTE and MACD.1 < 0 and MACD > 0

Or, the NOTE can be isolated into a NONE or TEST rule as simply:

NOTE = TRUE

The NOTE token always evaluated as TRUE. The NOTE token, like any other technical token can be qualified, e.g. a TEST rule may look like:

NOTE.1 and NOTE.2 and NOTE.0

The NOTE can be setup as a string of text plus instrument specific RTL tokens preceded by the % percent sign. For example, the NOTE text of:

%TICKER at %CL, HI=%HI LO=%LO

displays messages like the following in the backtesting detail report:

IBM at 104.50, HI=105.75 LO=104.00

When you qualify a NOTE, e.g. NOTE.1, the values displayed will be for the preceding bar. This applies to historical tokens like %OP, %HI, %LO, %CL, %VO, %OI. It does not apply to V# variables. A NOTE text that contains "%V#1" for example will display the current value of V#1 for the instrument regardless of the qualifier.

Using the NOTE tokens inside signals that are used to form TEST or NONE action rules provides the user with a powerful diagnostic capability to see step-by-step for each bar why the trading system is performing the way it is.