How to Set Up a Clean Chart

A clean chart, in five lines

Setting up a clean chart in MetaTrader is five steps done once and kept. F8, or right-click, Properties, opens the settings. The Colors tab: one background, one colour for up bars and one for down, nothing else loud. The Common tab: grid off, volumes off, period separators on, the Ask line as you like, where the Ask is the price you buy at. Ctrl+I lists the indicators, and the ones you do not read come off, leaving one or two at most. Then right-click, Template, Save Template, and the whole arrangement is a file that loads onto any chart with one click. A clean chart is not an empty chart; it is one where everything left on it is something you actually read.

A gallery wall

Picture two gallery walls. On the left, nine frames crowd the wall and the eye goes nowhere; on the right, one painting hangs on a plain wall with a small card beside it, and the eye goes straight to it. The gallery did not throw the other paintings away; it moved them to another room. A clean chart is the second wall. The bars are the painting, one indicator is the card, and the grid, the volumes, the extra lines and the six other indicators are asked to leave the room, where they can be fetched back at any time.

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