Insider Bars displays text and graphic objects on your TradeStation charts. This can be a little tricky, since the number of price points on the screen varies widely depending on the symbol charted and on market volatility. One day you might be able to display text at every price from that day using font size 10, and another day the same font size will have text bleeding together and illegible due to many more price levels being shown on the screen.
To address this issue, Insider Bars can control the font size automatically based on what can be displayed given chart size, price data, bar spacing, etc. If you would rather control font sizes manually, you can do this also.
Using Automatic Font Sizing
When using automatic font sizing, Insider Bars monitors the data visible on your chart, size of your chart, bar spacing, etc. and calculates the best font size. The font size changes automatically as your chart data changes. There are two settings required:
- Maximum Size This is the maximum font size used when space limitations are not an issue.
- Hide if Less Than If the chart details are such that it is impossible to display fonts at a legible size, the text display is hidden. This setting is the font size below which text will be hidden.
Choices for these settings will vary from one person to the next, based on monitor size and resolution, eyesight, etc. For best results, you need to take a minute and figure out what works for you.
Histograms resize automatically by default, and do not require any settings.
Using Fixed Font Sizing
If you uncheck the “Set Automatically” box, different input boxes appear as follows:
- Fixed: Bar Text This controls text font size.
- Fixed: Marker Controls Marker object size.
As the name states, fixed font sizes do not change.
Working with Chart Text
If you are using automatic scaling on your TradeStation chart, the price range shown on your chart will vary widely based on market volatility. What are your options if you have trouble seeing text on the screen?
- Reduce Chart Size A smaller chart size will have less bars and less range.
- Increase Bar Spacing When you increase bar spacing, your chart shows less bars which can show less range also.
- Use Background Dragging Background dragging is a TradeStation feature which allows you to drag the price scale to rescale your chart manually. If you are not familiar with this option, see this link.
TradeStation Tip: Reprogram your mouse wheel to increase or decrease chart bar spacing. Then you can easily roll your mouse wheel to see the big picture or to see more detail of recent bars. For more info, see this post.
Other Font Settings
Other Insider Bars font-related settings are as follows:
- Size forBid/Ask & Labels These fonts are not affected by the same scaling issues as Insider Object fonts, so are set separately.
- Text Font Style Choose your favorite font style from the items shown.
- Text/Marker Padding Sometimes you may wish to add some space between the chart bar or candle and the Insider Object. This setting allows you to do that.
- Text Volume Divisor With some symbols, for instance high volume stocks, you may wish to display volume divided by 100 or by 1000. This setting gives you the option to do this.
Note: Blog posts like this one offer basic information. For more details, see online help.