TradingCharts

Forecast

Sketch your primary scenario before the session so later price action can be judged against a pre-commitment rather than hindsight.

What it draws

Draws a projected price path from a starting bar into the future, rendering the hypothesized move as a marked trajectory on forthcoming bars. It is a communication and planning tool for stating where you expect price to travel and by when.

How to draw it

  1. Pick Forecast from the left toolbar (Projection group).
  2. Two anchor points: click at the starting bar and price, then at the future bar and price where you expect the move to complete. The chart draws the forecast path between them.

How traders use it

  • Sketch your primary scenario before the session so later price action can be judged against a pre-commitment rather than hindsight.
  • Use the endpoint to encode both a price target and a time deadline — a move that hasn't arrived by the forecast bar is a failed thesis.
  • Draw alternative forecasts (bull and bear paths) from the same origin to pre-plan responses to either resolution.
  • Review old forecasts against what actually printed as a journaling discipline.

Settings reference

Double-click the drawing (or use its floating toolbar → gear) to open settings:

Setting Control Possible values Default Effect
Color color any color (theme color picker) #05B878 Main stroke color of the drawing — lines, outlines and (unless overridden) labels derive from it.
Line Width select 1px | 2px | 3px | 4px 2px Stroke thickness of the drawing’s lines and outlines.
Line Style select Solid | Dashed | Dotted Solid Dash pattern used for the drawing’s lines.
Cone Spread % slider 1–50 15 Width of the forecast cone — how far the projected range fans out from the anchor line.
[Tab] Text — Text checkbox + textarea on/off, with a multiline text box for the label content off (on when the drawing already carries text) Enables an attached text label on the drawing; typing in the box auto-enables it and updates the label live.
[Tab] Text — Text Color color any color same as the drawing’s line color Color of the attached text label.
[Tab] Text — Font Size select 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 48, 64, 72 14 Point size of the attached label text.
[Tab] Text — Bold checkbox on/off (B toggle button) off Renders the label in bold.
[Tab] Text — Italic checkbox on/off (I toggle button) off Renders the label in italics.
[Tab] Text — Word Wrap checkbox on/off off Wraps long label text onto multiple lines instead of one long line.
[Tab] Text — Text alignment (vertical) select Top | Middle | Bottom Top Vertical placement of the label relative to the drawing.
[Tab] Text — Text alignment (horizontal) select Left | Center | Right Center Horizontal placement of the label relative to the drawing.
[Tab] Coordinates number + datetime one row per anchor point: price (number, step 0.05) and local date/time the drawing’s current anchor values Edits anchor geometry numerically — changing a point’s price or time moves the drawing live on the chart.
[Tab] Visibility checkbox + number range interval buckets: Ticks; Seconds 1–59; Minutes 1–59; Hours 1–24; Days 1–366; Weeks 1–52; Months 1–12; Ranges (each bucket has an on/off checkbox, most also a from–to range) visible on all intervals Per-timeframe visibility rules — untick a bucket to hide the drawing on those chart resolutions, or narrow the from–to range within a bucket.

Editing & managing

  • Move / adjust: drag the drawing or any anchor handle; magnet mode snaps points to OHLC values.
  • Clone / lock / hide / delete from the floating toolbar or right-click menu.
  • Templates: save the current style from the settings dialog and reapply it to new drawings.
  • Every action is undoable (⌘Z / Ctrl+Z).

Watch out for

  • A forecast is an annotation, not an indicator — it has no predictive machinery behind it and should never be mistaken for a computed projection.