Using Long Term Charts

Track 'n Trade Pro creates weekly and monthly long-term charts with up to 10 years of historical data.  To open a long term chart click on the appropriate button to the right of the chart window. The day button is selected automatically when you open a commodity contract.

Comparison of Chart Ticks

Chart

Tick Represents Open High Low Close
Daily  One Day Day's open Day's High Day's low Day's close
Weekly  One Week 1st Day's Open Value High for the Week Low for the Week Last Day's Close Value
Monthly  One Month 1st Day's Open Value High for the Month Low for the Month Last Day's Close Value

How are Long Term Charts created?  

Because commodity contracts overlap over each other, Track 'n Trade Pro creates its long term charts using front month contracts.  This method includes the portion of the contract that is actively being traded and therefore having higher volume and open interest.  This is demonstrated in the diagram below:

Diagram 1:  The red boxes represent the portion of the contract that Track 'n Trade Pro uses to create the long term chart.

Other Options Available on the Long Term Charts:

Another way to create a long term chart, is to take only the "fat" portion of each front month contract and paste them together. With this method, you are both cutting off the beginning of the chart (where there is typically less volume and open interest) and the end of the chart where it is "cooling down" (Most traders are transferring their orders to the next month's contract). See Diagrams Below:

Diagram 2: Contracts tend to have more activity during the middle of the contract and less toward the end when trader's are transferring their orders to the next month's contract.  Track 'n Trade Pro can cut out the middle of each contract and then paste them together as a long term chart.

Diagram 3:  Using options available in Track 'n Trade Pro, traders are able to specify the number of days at the end of a contract that they would like excluded from a long term chart.

Setting Long Term Chart Parameters:

  1. Open Program Options (Click on View - Program Options).
  2. Click on the Long Term Tab.


     

Available Options:
The following options are available for both the Weekly and Monthly Long Term Charts.

  1. Build Long Term Charts From:
bulletFront Month Data: This options uses data from one contract month
to the next in historical order. For example Jan 2001, Mar 2001, May 2001
and so on.
bulletContract Month Data: This option uses data from a contract month
from each successive year.  For example Jan 2001, Jan 2002, Jan 2003 and
so on.
  1. How much data should be included?:  2-10 years of data can be displayed at a time on a long term chart.  Click on the drop down menu to specify the # of years to be displayed.

    2.  
  2. To cut off the end of the contract used in your long term chart, click on the empty check box in front of the text: "Read ahead to next contract month before the end of the current contract month."  Next, specify the number of days in the box that you would like to exclude.
     
  3. To set the options back to factory defaults, click on the Restore Defaults button on the bottom of the Properties screen.
     
  4. Notice the documentation section at the end of the page.  This section includes instruction for each option page.