Why draw on a chart
Markets have memory. A price where buyers stepped in last month tends to matter again, because the people who missed it the first time are waiting there, and the people who bought there are watching their entry.
Drawing is how you mark those places so you notice when price returns. A horizontal line under a price that has bounced three times is not magic, it is a note to yourself that says “something happened here, pay attention if we come back”.
Two ideas cover most of it:
Support is a price level where buying has repeatedly appeared, stopping a fall. Resistance is the same thing above, where selling has repeatedly appeared. Cross one convincingly and it often becomes the other, because the crowd that defended it has now given up.
You do not need to believe in complicated chart patterns to get value from this. Mark where price actually turned, and you will find out fairly quickly whether the market agrees with you.
Five tools worth learning first
Horizontal Line. Support and resistance. This is the workhorse and it will be 80% of your drawing.
Trend Line. Connects a run of rising lows or falling highs. Same idea as a horizontal level, tilted.
Long Position / Short Position. Drag from your entry to your target and it shades the zone between, green where the move helps you and red where it hurts, with the percentage labelled. Drag an edge and the numbers follow. Use this before every trade, because it forces you to name a target and a stop before you have any money on the line.
Measure. Drag across anything to get the move in price and percent, plus how much time it took.
Fibonacci Retracement. Drag from a swing low to a swing high and it draws horizontal levels at 38.2%, 50% and 61.8% of the move. Plenty of traders watch those levels, which is a large part of why they sometimes work.
The full catalogue
Forty-five tools in nine groups, on the toolbar down the left edge of the chart.
Lines (9). Trend Line, Ray, Extended Line, Info Line, Trend Angle, Horizontal Line, Horizontal Ray, Vertical Line, Cross Line.
Channels (3). Parallel Channel, Pitchfork, Polyline.
Shapes (9). Rectangle, Rotated Rectangle, Circle, Ellipse, Triangle, Diamond, Star, Hexagon, Arc.
Annotations (5). Text, Arrow, Callout, Brush, Highlighter.
Fibonacci (5). Retracement, Extension, Channel, Time Zone, Wedge.
Gann (2). Gann Fan, Gann Box.
Patterns (5). Triangle Pattern, ABCD, XABCD, Head and Shoulders, Elliott Wave.
Projection (4). Long Position, Short Position, Forecast, Anchored VWAP.
Measure (3). Measure, Date Range, Price and Date Range.
Shortcuts
Fifteen tools have a chord. Hold Alt (Option on macOS) and press:
| Chord | Tool | Chord | Tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alt+T | Trend Line | Alt+I | Info Line |
| Alt+Y | Ray | Alt+A | Arrow |
| Alt+E | Extended Line | Alt+X | Text |
| Alt+H | Horizontal Line | Alt+R | Rectangle |
| Alt+V | Vertical Line | Alt+F | Fibonacci |
| Alt+C | Cross Line | Alt+M | Measure |
| Alt+L | Long Position | Alt+D | Date Range |
| Alt+S | Short Position |
Editing:
| Chord | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘Z | Undo |
| ⇧⌘Z | Redo |
| Delete or Backspace | Delete the selected drawing |
| Esc | Drop the active tool |
Shortcuts go to the chart you last pointed at, so they work even when focus is somewhere else in the app.
Sticky and single-use tools
By default a tool is single-use: draw once and you are back to select and pan. Hit the pin button for sticky tools and the tool stays armed, so you can lay down six levels without going back to the toolbar between each one.
Magnet snapping
Switch the crosshair to magnet and your anchors snap to the nearest open, high, low or close. It is the difference between a support line sitting exactly on three wicks and one sitting nearly on three wicks, which matters when you are going to place an order against it.
Styling
Select a drawing and a properties bar appears: colour, line width, line style. You can also lock a drawing so it stops responding to clicks, which is what you want once a level is final and you are drawing busily around it.
Style choices carry forward. Make one trend line a thick dashed amber and the next comes out the same way. Each tool remembers its own defaults, so your Fibonacci settings do not follow your trend lines.
Clearing up
The Clear menu offers three scopes: drawings, indicators, or both.
Only clear drawings is undoable, so a mis-click costs you one ⌘Z. Clearing indicators is not, and you will have to add them back by hand. Worth knowing before you reach for the wider option to tidy a busy chart.
Persistence
Drawings are saved per pair alongside the rest of your chart state. Close the app, come back next week, and your levels are where you left them. Local by default, synced across devices when you are signed in, which is why a level you drew on your phone is on your laptop.
Custom shapes
Plugins can contribute drawing tools the built-in set does not cover. See Fast Financial Charts.