Chart setup

Reading a chart: the settings to fix first (Nigeria)

The candles are the easy half. What they look like, how much time each covers and which lines sit on top are all decided in settings windows first.

A chart draws what its settings tell it to draw. Most sit in two or three windows and go back in seconds; one decision — the price at which a trade should be closed — has no window at all. Words that snag are in trading words.

Where a chart keeps its settings

Five things about the picture are set in four different places.

What it decides	Where it is opened	Travels to a second chart?
Time covered by one candle	Period row on the toolbar: M1, H1, D1	No — set per chart
Candles, bars or a plain line	Properties window, behind a right-click	Only inside a saved arrangement
Colours, grid, crosshair	The same properties window	Only inside a saved arrangement
What is drawn on top	The list of overlays on that chart	Only inside a saved arrangement
Which instrument is on screen	The instrument list — not a settings window	No — one chart, one instrument

Nothing in that table touches a price.

What a saved arrangement carries

A saved arrangement — most platforms call it a template — is the look of a chart written down: how the price is drawn, colours, grid, overlays. Three things never travel with it:

The instrument. A chart holds one, and the arrangement does not choose it.
The prices. They arrive from the market, and no colour scheme changes the gap between the two quoted numbers.
The exit price that was in mind. A stop-loss is typed into an order, not configured on a chart, so no saved look remembers one.

Whether the period travels with the look is worth testing: apply the arrangement to a chart sitting on a different period.

Settings that change what a click does

Three change how the screen behaves, not how it looks:

One-click trading. Switched on, a single press sends an order instead of opening a ticket to read first. Meet it on a demo account.
Trade levels drawn on the chart. Lines marking an open trade and the stop-loss under it. Off, the picture is tidier; on, the exit price is visible.
Auto-scroll. Whether the picture keeps following the newest candle. A stalled chart is usually this, not a fault.

Four things with no setting at all

Direction. No window anywhere holds a preference for up or down.
Size. Typed into an order, and worked out in the practice calculator.
The exit price. The stop-loss field accepts a number and suggests none. A chart shows where one would sit; it cannot pick it.
The next candle. The picture stops at the right edge: that time has not been traded yet. No checkbox extends it, and no window produces certainty about it.

This site is an independent guide, not a broker: it opens no accounts and holds no money.

Change one thing, then put it back

Read the window before changing it

A setting is only reversible if the old value was noticed. Open it and alter nothing.
Change one setting, then check the right edge

The current price should carry on untouched. If it moved, the market moved — not the setting.
Clear the overlays

Those lines calculate on prices already drawn. A plain screen first.
Save the look, then open a second chart

Apply the arrangement there. Whatever it refuses to copy is what a saved look does not hold.

What survives the platform being closed

These settings live where the platform runs — that machine, that browser, that app. The same account opened elsewhere finds a default chart instead.

The balance and open trades sit on the broker's side, not in the picture, so a chart can be reset to nothing without a figure in the account changing — those figures belong to risk basics.

Questions about the settings windows

Where does a chart keep its own settings?

Behind a right-click on the picture, under properties. The period row is separate, on the toolbar.

Do the colours change anything the market does?

No. Colour decides how a candle looks; the numbers behind it are everyone's.

The newest candle drifted off the right edge — which setting did that?

Auto-scroll switched off, or the chart dragged sideways. Turn it on and the picture jumps back.

What exactly does saving an arrangement save?

The look: how the price is drawn, colours, grid, overlays. Not the market, not the prices.

Does an arrangement carry the instrument with it?

No. Applied elsewhere, it dresses whatever was already on that chart.

Will these settings be waiting on another device?

Usually not. A second device opens its own default chart.

Is there a setting that closes the gap between the two prices?

No. That gap is the spread, a cost set in the market, not on the screen.

Can a setting choose the exit price?

No — the honest limit of every window here. A stop-loss level is named by a person.

Everything is unreadable now — is there a way back?

Undo them one at a time, newest first. Failing that, a fresh chart starts from defaults.

Does the period row belong with the rest of the settings?

Differently. Colours change how a candle looks; the period changes how much time it covers.

Grid and crosshair on, or off?

Either. The grid helps read a level, the crosshair a distance. Neither adds information.

Should one-click trading be switched on while learning?

Not on real money. It removes the confirmation step a beginner most needs to read.

Can any of these windows move money?

None. They decide how a picture is drawn; money moves through orders and deposit screens.

Do overlays belong in a saved arrangement at all?

Once they earn their place — otherwise the clutter repeats on every new chart.

After the chart is set up

Trading words

Candle, period, spread, stop-loss — the labels these windows use, in plain language.

Open the dictionary

Practice calculator

The size no chart setting decides, worked out before an order exists.

Work it out

Your first trade

Where a configured chart turns into an order ticket, click by click.

See the steps

No chart to set up yet?

A free demo opens with an email and a password, on virtual money with no time limit. Put EUR/USD on screen and change one setting.

Open a free demo at Exness