FAQ
How do I use user-generated charts and why are they so valuable?
The Stat-Box and the Ticks-Button can expose hidden secrets about brokers and liquidity. They are extremely powerful tools in analyzing broker’s feeds.
The Tick-Box shows every price tick that was streamed to your MetaTrader terminal. At times of thin liquidity, feeds can show different characteristics. These differences can be exposed by careful analysis of your broker’s liquidity feed. The most common thing to happen on the eve of a news release is an increase in the bid-ask spread. But the degree of the increase, the duration and the consistency can vary a lot.
There can be few or many price ticks for every timestamp. Generally speaking, you do want to see a feed with many ticks during a news release. As this is an indicator of deep liquidity.
By analyzing your feed, you will find the following feed characteristics:
- Spread caps for some or all instruments
- Tick reduction or increase for some or all instruments
- Price freezes for some or all instruments
- Lagging price feeds for some or all instruments
The Stat-Box is an easy way to get an overview of your feed. Indicators, like Max Event Spread, are very valuable in quickly determining the possible transaction costs during a news event.
Also, the Spike Quality may help you determine if a trade at certain brokerages makes sense
What price feeds do you use for you historical charts?
We use the Dukascopy and Oanda APIs for our live charts.
How many charts can I upload to the MacroCharts?
Every subscriber can upload up to 30 charts to the MacroCharts
Is there a time limit for user-generated charts?
There is no fixed limit for user-generated charts. However, we ask our users to focus on the ticks at and around the actual news event. Generally, 60 seconds before and 60 seconds after the event is more than enough to understand a broker’s price feed during an event. We will delete any user-generated chart with an unreasonable length.