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Market Watch

The Market Watch window provides an overview of price data of financial instruments: quotes, price statistics and tick chart. It also provides details of contract specifications and One Click Trading options.

How to View Quotes of Financial Instruments

The Market Watch features real-time quotes of financial instruments and other price data: spread, volume, etc.

Market Watch

Financial instrument name

Bid price

Ask price

The last price at which the deal was executed

The volume of the last executed deal

Spread — the difference between the Bid and Ask prices

The last quote arrival time

The displayed data can be configured in the context menu. For example, you can show the "Source" field — the provider of the financial instrument liquidity.

Double-clicking on one of the instruments opens a new position opening window. A symbol chart can be opened by dragging it to the chart viewing area using a mouse (Drag'n'Drop); in this case windows of currently open charts will be closed. If you hold down "Ctrl" while dragging, the chart is opened in a separate tab, and other charts remain open.

  • In the High and Low columns of symbols whose charts are built at Bid prices, the Bid High and Bid Low prices are displayed. If a symbol chart is constructed using Last prices, Last High and Last Low prices are shown for this symbol. If Market Watch contains at least one symbol whose chart is drawn based on Last prices, the Last column is automatically enabled in addition to High/Low.

Prices in the "Market Watch" window have different colors:

If the depth of market and the Last trade price is available for a symbol, the color is determined by the Last price. Otherwise, the color is determined by the Bid price.

The individual background coloring for symbols can also be configured on the server. This enables their visual distinguishing by types, exchange and other properties. If you do not want to use the specified coloring, enable the "Use system colors" option in the context menu.

How to Quickly Add Symbols

To quickly add a symbol in the Market Watch, click + below the list and enter the name of the symbol. While you type in the name, the list of suitable symbols is shown.

To quickly add a symbol click on + at the bottom and enter the name

Information about the current number of symbols in the Market Watch and the total number of available symbols is available at the bottom of the list.

If you work with different brokers or markets, you can save separate Market Watch settings for each of them. Create a list of symbols, select the desired columns and click "Symbol Sets — Save as". The saved set becomes available for quick switching through the same menu.

How to Sort Symbols

To sort the list of symbols, click on any column header. For example, the list can be sorted by symbol name, close price, daily change or other variables. The context menu features the most popular sorting options. For example, sorting by the highest growth and fall based on a daily symbol price change can be useful when trading exchange instruments.

Analysis by Sector and Industry

Special trading instrument properties indicate the sector and industry which the instrument belongs to. These properties enable the complex analysis of financial symbols directly in the Market Watch. Select a category from the menu, and all available instruments will be added to a list:

Financial symbol analysis by sector and industry

You can save your own symbol sets and easily switch between them in a couple of clicks. Click "Sets \ Save" and specify a name for the set. The file will save the list of symbols and a set of selected columns, which means that you will not need to set up the Market Watch window every time.

If sector and industry data is not available, please contact your broker.

How to View Fundamental Data

You can easily view fundamental trading symbol data available on popular aggregator websites: Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, Finviz and many others. The relevant data can be accessed via the Fundamental Data menu:

Fundamental data on trading instruments

How to View Trade Statistics of Financial Instruments

To view statistics, select a financial instrument in the "Symbols" tab and click "Details".

Statistical details of an instrument are available on the Details tab

The statistical information includes:

The number of statistical values depends on the brokerage company.

One Click Trading

The One Click Trading option is available on the "Trading" tab. Upon clicking on the "Sell" or "Buy" button, a request to perform the corresponding trade operation in the specified volume is instantly sent to the server. This trading mode is available under the following conditions:

In other cases, a click on a button opens the order creation window.

One Click Trading

Financial instrument name

The last quote arrival time

A command to perform a Sell deal

A command to perform a Buy deal

Volume control: use arrows on the right and the left of the field, or use a keyboard

Current Bid price

Current Ask price

The lowest Bid price for the current day (Bid Low)

The highest Ask price for the current day (Ask High)

Current spread and swap for short and long positions. If the price of the last executed deal is available for a symbol, it is displayed instead of spread and swap.

This window contains panels for performing trade operations with different symbols. The set of symbols for quick trading is taken from the list on the "Symbols" tab and can be adjusted using the "Symbols Symbols" command in the context menu.

  • Be careful, once the "Sell" or "Buy" button is pressed, the corresponding request to buy or the sell the specified amount of a selected symbol is immediately sent to the server without any additional confirmation.
  • The execution of the commands mentioned above does not always result in a corresponding deal. The reason can be a requote, refusal of a brokerage company, etc. In this case, an appropriate message is added to the platform log.
  • In the Instant Execution mode, the allowable price deviation in orders is set in accordance with the "Use deviation" option.
  • The Fill Policy is selected based on the trading instrument execution mode: for exchange execution it is always "Return", for market execution it is either "Fill or Kill" or "Immediate or Cancel" (depending on what policy is allowed for the symbol), for instant and request execution it is always "Fill or Kill".
  • When a requote is received, an appropriate message is added to the platform journal and a requote sound is played.

Depending on the quotes, the trade operation execution and price field may have different colors:

If the depth of market and the Last trade price is available for a symbol, the color is determined by the Last price. Otherwise, the color is determined by the Bid price.

How to Manage Symbols

Open the window for managing symbols with the command "Symbols Symbols" of the context menu of the "Market Watch" window. It allows you to hide and show symbols in this window, as well as view their properties:

Double-click on a symbol to add it to the Market Watch

All symbols available in the platform are displayed here. A double click on a symbol name is used for hiding or showing it in the Market Watch window. The same actions can be performed by buttons "Hide" and "Show".

Here you can also create a custom financial instrument.

  • If there are open positions or pending orders for the financial instrument, or when its chart is open, the instrument cannot be hidden from the Market Watch.
  • If a symbol is hidden in the Market Watch, its data cannot be used in MQL5 programs and the Strategy Tester.
  • No more than 5000 financial instrument can be added to "Market Watch".

At the bottom of the window, properties of the selected symbol are shown.

To quickly find a symbol, use the filter at the top of the window. Type the first letters of the symbol name or description in it. A list of symbols corresponding to the search string appears below.

Relevance of Trading Instruments

All expired symbols are hidden to preserve a more compact display. This is particularly convenient when working on the futures market. A non-relevant symbol is the expired one, which is defined by the "Last trade" parameter. This date is specified in the "Expiration" column of the list of symbols. To view all symbols, click "Show expired contracts".

For convenience, the list of symbols is automatically sorted:

Option "Auto remove expired" in the context menu allows to automatically replace expired symbols with active ones in the Market Watch window. After the platform restart, expired symbols are hidden, and active ones are added instead. For example, the expired futures contract LKOH 3.15 will be replaced with the next contact of the same underlying asset LKOH 6.15.

Symbols in the appropriate open charts are also replaced, provided there are no running Expert Advisors on them.

Expired symbols are hidden and replaced only after the platform restart.

Downloading price history

The trading platform allows downloading the quote and tick history from the broker's server. For example, you can download it in advance without waiting for the platform to do that during a test or optimization. The downloaded history can also be saved as a CSV file to perform analysis in third-party applications.

To download data, open the symbol management dialog in the "Market Watch" context menu and switch to the Bars or Ticks tab.

Downloading quote and tick history

Select a symbol and a timeframe, and click Request. The platform requests all available data from the server or displays them immediately if they have already been downloaded. Click Export to save price data as a CSV file.

You can also export current chart data by clicking "Save Save" in the File menu.

In addition to price information (Вid, Ask, Last, volume), tick data contains flags. The flags enable the analysis of which data has changed with the current tick:

If a tick has multiple flags, you will see the total value. For example, 6 means that the tick changed the bid and the ask price; 24 means that it changed the last price and volume.

  • The entire history of quotes in the trading platform is stored in the form of minute bars. All other timeframes are based on them. Thus, switching timeframes in the dialog does not affect the download. The history is downloaded once. When requesting other timeframes, the platform simply calculates and saves them in the local cache.
  • The maximum number of downloaded bars is limited by the "Max bars in chart" parameter.
  • The tick data are large, occupy a lot of disk space and may take a long time.

Price history import

The import function is only available for custom financial instruments.

Viewing Symbol Specification

The symbol specification window features the symbol trading conditions (contract specification). To start viewing properties of the selected symbol, click "Specification Specification" in the context menu of the Market Watch window.

To view symbol parameters select Specification in its context menu in Market Watch

The following set of parameters set by a broker is displayed here:

Commission

Information on commissions charged by a broker for the symbol deals. Calculation details are displayed here:

For example, the following entry means that a commission is charged immediately upon deal entry and exit. If the deal volume is from 0 to 10 lots, a commission of 1.2 USD is charged per operation. If the deal volume is 11 to 20 lots, a commission of 1.1 USD is charged per each lot of the deal.

Commission | Instant, volume, entry/exit deals
0  - 10   | 1.2 USD per deal
11 - 20   | 1.1 USD per loat

 

Sessions

The lower part shows information about quoting and trading sessions of the symbol. Sessions are specified for every day of the week.

Spreads

The margin can be charged on preferential basis in case trading positions are in spread relative to each other. The spread trading is defined as the presence of the oppositely directed positions of correlated symbols. Reduced margin requirements provide more trading opportunities for traders.

More detailed information on spread can be found in the appropriate section.

Viewing the Tick Chart

To view the tick chart of an instrument, select a symbol in the "Symbols" tab of the Market Watch and switch to the "Ticks" tab.

To view a tick chart, select the symbol and go to the Ticks tab

  • The platform stores up to 2000 last ticks for each symbol.
  • The tick chart is cleared and then redrawn in case you delete and re-add a symbol in the Market Watch window. Previous tick data can also be cleared for a correct scaling of the tick chart (if current prices differ from previous prices significantly).

Popup Prices

This window allows displaying price information on screens of all sizes — its main feature is font scaling. To open it click "Popup Prices Popup Prices" in the context menu of the Market Watch.

To view quotes on large screens, click on Popup Prices in the context menu of the Market Watch

The Popup Prices window features the dame information as is available in Market Watch: the same set of symbols and columns, with the same sorting. By hovering your mouse over a symbol name, you can view brief information about it from the contract specification.

Use the context menu to customize the window view: