Track 'n Trade LIVE Futures

Opening Charts and using the Symbol Chooser

Video Transcript

In this video, we're going to talk about how to open a chart in Track and Trade Futures.

If you'll notice up here, we have a select commodity drop-down box within the Charts tab of the control panel. So, all we have to do is click that, and it's going to drop down and allow us to select any number of commodities, indexes, futures contracts, or currency contracts traded in the futures exchanges.

Now, you can select any one of these, or if there's something in the list that you don't want or something you might want that isn’t listed, this list can be customized. To do so, click on this icon right up here next to the little camera icon. This little tower icon, if you click on it, brings up the symbol, the exchange, and whether it's turned on or not. This is your selection on the right-hand side, so you can go through and decide which commodities you would like to have in your list.

I've got mine selected already, so we're going to come down and open up crude oil. If I slide down, I can find crude oil. There it is, listed as oil, and I'm going to say NYX Oil. We're going to go ahead and, this time, select the expiration or contract month.

Unlike the stock market, in the futures market, you need to select a contract month because these are deliverable products. Therefore, somebody's going to take delivery of this crude oil once the contract has expired. So, you have to take into consideration the contract month and that this contract expires, allowing you to move on to the next contract.

In this case, we come in here and let's say we're going to do the December contract, December 2023. That’s the market that opens up, and you can see that we've now opened up crude oil into our symbol list down here in the symbol review page.

Now, you'll notice that that's a daily chart. If we right-click on that symbol, you can see that we can change that daily chart to any number of time frames. Let's say, for example, I want it to be a 5-minute chart. I just click on that, and it changes that chart. As you can see, it's loading the data, and it changes the chart to a 5-minute chart.

Now, if I want to come in and change that chart to a 10-minute chart, I have another choice down here in the bottom window. You can see that I have tabs along the bottom window. The tabs show options such as range bar, 1-minute, 2-minute, and this one is currently 5-minute, 15-minute, 4-hour, daily, weekly, and monthly. But, I don't have a 10-minute chart.

So, what do I do? Well, I right-click on one of these tabs, and it brings up a right-click menu. I can select whatever tab time I want. I'm going to change the 15-minute to a 10-minute chart just by typing that in, going ahead and hitting apply, and now that will bring up the 10-minute chart. If I click on the 10-minute tab, I now have a 10-minute chart loading. You can see it's loading the data, and there's my 10-minute chart.

Over here on the right-hand side, you can see it changes to a 10-minute chart. I can right-click on it, and now you see 10 minutes in the list, whereas before it was 15 minutes. We can change it back to a different time frame as well, returning once again to our 5-minute chart. So, that's two different methods of changing your chart time frame.

Now, if we want to open a second chart, let's come in here, and I'm going to double-click on crude oil, and it opens up a daily chart. Now, I have a 5-minute chart and a daily chart. Both charts are crude oil and the December crude oil contract, but they're two different charts.

For example, if I take the daily chart, right-click on it, and change it over to, let's say, a 2-minute chart, now I have a 5-minute chart and a 2-minute chart. These are two separate charts.

So, for example, if I draw a drawing tool on the 2-minute chart and then go to the 5-minute chart, that tool will not be there because these are two separate charts. Even though they're both crude oil and both the December contract, they are two separate charts.

Now, if I place an order and buy or sell on the 5-minute chart, for example, if we come in here and we say "buy market," and we just buy a contract, we come back to our chart and go to the 2-minute chart. You'll notice that the order is there because it is the crude oil chart. It's the December crude oil chart, and we're trading the crude oil chart on either the 2-minute or the 5-minute chart. The order is on both, but the drawing, because we have two different charts, is only on one chart—the chart that I drew it on.

So, if I come over to the 5-minute chart and I draw another drawing tool, let's say a square in this case, now on my 5-minute chart I have a square, and on my 2-minute chart, I have a circle. But now, let's say I want to take this 2-minute chart and make it a 10-minute chart. If I right-click on it and slide down to 10 minutes, it's still going to have the circle because I changed that chart to be a 10-minute chart.