Setting up your first chart

You have learned to read candles, timeframes, volume, sessions, and gaps. Now put them on your own screen. This lesson (and its video, when it is recorded) walks through setting up a chart on a free charting platform. We do not recommend a particular product. The steps below exist in some form on any charting platform; the menu names will differ, so look for the idea, not the exact button. As one example, TradingView’s help center documents every step in this lesson: a symbol search, an interval menu (including tick and range intervals), a chart type menu with a Hollow candles option, a built-in Volume indicator, a time zone setting, and a choice between the full electronic session and RTH for CME futures, which its help page says is available on every plan.

Step 1: Pick the symbol

Search for the contract you want to study. For practice, use a micro: MNQ or MES.

As you learned in Runner Lesson 9, a full futures symbol has a product code, a month code, and a year, like NQZ6. Make sure the chart is showing the active contract month. In Lesson 8 of this level you saw that volume moves to the next month during the roll, so if your chart has almost no volume, you may be on an old or far-off month.

Step 2: Pick the timeframe

Choose how much time each candle covers. A good starting set is 5-minute for the day and daily for the bigger picture (Lesson 7). If you want to try a tick or range chart, CME Group’s chart lesson notes you can choose a time-based or a trade-based setting for how often a new candle appears.

Whatever you choose, keep the setting visible on screen so you always know what you are reading.

Step 3: Pick the chart type

Switch the style to candlestick (Lesson 2). Then open the style settings and set the candle bodies so you can tell them apart without color: hollow for close above open, filled for close below open (Lesson 4). Color is optional. If you keep it, treat it as a bonus.

Step 4: Add volume

Add the volume panel so it sits under the candles, one bar per candle (Lesson 8). Read it by bar height.

Step 5: Set the time zone and the session

Two settings decide whether the clock on your chart matches this course:

• Time zone: set it to Central Time (CT), the time zone used across LearnToTick. Then the RTH open appears at 8:30 a.m. and the daily break at 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (Runner Lesson 10; CME contract specs).
• Session: if your platform lets you choose, try all hours first so you can see the overnight session, then switch to RTH only and watch the overnight candles disappear (Lessons 9 and 10). Check what your platform calls RTH: TradingView’s RTH setting for CME futures shows 8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. CT, a little past the 3:00 p.m. CT close of the stock market’s core session that this course uses for RTH.

Your practice routine

Before you move on, spend a few minutes on your new chart:

1. Pick any candle and name its open, high, low, and close.
2. Say whether it is an up or down candle from where the open and close sit.
3. Find a long wick and a doji-like candle (Lessons 5 and 6).
4. Find the 8:30 a.m. CT RTH open and compare the volume bars before and after it.
5. Switch to RTH only and look for a gap at the open.

This is reading practice, not trading. Nothing on the chart is telling you to buy or sell. In the next level, Order Filler, you will learn how orders actually work before you ever place one, even on a simulator.

Key ideas

• Five setup choices: symbol, timeframe, chart type, volume, session hours, plus the time zone.
• Use a micro (MNQ or MES) and check you are on the active contract month.
• Set hollow vs. filled candles so you never depend on color.
• Set the chart to CT so RTH starts at 8:30 a.m.
• Use your chart to practice reading. It is not a signal machine.