The most common way you will open chart windows is from either a trade list or scan output list.

There is also a general-purpose "Show Chart" item on the Data Menu, for when you just want to look at a specific symbol.

RealTest chart windows can include up to five panes: a price pane in the middle, up to three optional upper indicator panes stacked above it, and an optional lower pane below it. Each pane automatically appears when it has content and disappears when it does not.

The price pane shows the OHLC bars or candlesticks, and can also show any number of price-derived lines such as moving averages or volatility bands.

The upper indicator panes – named ind1 (closest to price), ind2, and ind3 (on top) – each show any number of indicators sharing the same scale. An indicator is routed to a specific pane by including a {pane: ind1} (etc.) attribute in its formula, or by using the shorthand {^} (= ^1), {^2}, {^3}. See Output Format Specification for the full attribute syntax (including per-line color and line styles: Line, Bars, Dashed, Dotted – and per-line width).

The lower pane shows color-coded volume bars, or can show another group of custom indicators (sharing the same scale) routed there with {|} or {pane: volume}. It appears automatically when it has content or when the data includes volume bars, and disappears otherwise.

The horizontal dividing line between any two consecutive active panes can be dragged up or down with the mouse to adjust their relative heights independently.

Other features of chart windows:

1.Clicking anywhere in the chart shows the cursor or moves it to that location

2.The period (dot) key toggles the cursor

3.Clicking beyond the range of bars (e.g. in the Y axis legend) or pressing ESC removes the cursor

4.The X key toggles the cross-hairs

5.The N key toggles the grid lines

6.The T key cycles the trade labels option (None, Selected, All) on a trade chart

7.Scroll Left/Right by doing any of the following:

•left/right arrow to move 1 bar

•shift+left/shift+right arrow to move 10 bars

•roll the mouse wheel (with or without shift)

•drag the Scrollbar thumb

6.Zoom in/out by doing any of the following:

•enter a visible bar count in the options dialog

•hold down Ctrl and roll the mouse wheel

•press the + or – keys

•grab and drag either end of the scrollbar thumb

•if the caret is not visible, click and drag across a subset of the visible range to zoom in to that subset (hit ESC to revert to the former view)

7.Drag the horizontal divider line between two panes to change their relative sizes

As with results and graphs, custom elements are added to charts using the Charts Section of a script:

If the active script does not include a Charts section then the default script – Charts.rts in the program directory – is applied.

Other chart options are accessible via the Chart Menu and the options dialog. Most of them can also be set from a script — see Chart Settings.

The "Trade Extra" setting controls the positioning of the X Axis relative to the current trade when scrolling through a trade list.

This makes it possible to efficiently review many trades from a backtest – an effective way to get new ideas for things to test.

The "Show Other Trades" setting optionally causes all trades in the current symbol that are within the visible date range to be shown together on one chart.

Trades are marked with arrows drawn just outside the bar’s high-low range, in the strategy’s color. The arrow points the way the order went (up = bought, down = sold) and its fill tells entry from exit: a filled arrow opens a position and a hollow arrow closes one, so a long trade is a filled up-arrow below its entry bar and a hollow down-arrow above its exit bar, and a short trade the reverse. A skipped entry is a dotted hollow arrow, and a position still open at the end of the test has an entry arrow only. The chart’s own trade also gets a dot at each fill price, the optional entry-to-exit line, and (unless Show Other Trades is on) a detail row below the legend.

The "Trade Labels" setting controls which markers get text labels (buy/short at the entry, the exit reason at the exit): None, Selected (only the chart’s own trade) or All (the default). Labels are placed on the outer side of the arrow and are dropped rather than drawn on top of one another when trades are dense. When several trades enter or exit on the same bar (as a dynamically sized strategy does when it rebalances), they share one arrow whose label carries the count, e.g. “buy x3”. Hovering the mouse over any marker shows a tooltip with the trade’s details, or one line per trade for a shared marker, and clicking the marker of another trade selects that trade (in the trade list as well), re-framing the chart on it; each click on a shared marker moves on to the next of its trades.

The indicator color list specifies the default colors of indicator lines that don't specify a color in their formulas.

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