I use ameritrade thinkorswim platform and sometimes use the built in prophet charts and sometimes use the thinkorswim ones. When charting the eur/usd on one chart (ameritrades) it shows it breaking out of the channel, but on the prophet chart it shows it just barely breaking the downward channel. Why on earth would these two charts show different channels????? This is the daily time frame...
This is like Spot the Difference games when I was a kid. I'll give you a clue. Count the candles on the first channel traverse on each chart. Notice any difference?
as you can see i failed that activity in kindergarten ha. I see....14 in thinkorswim and 16 in the prophet, what to believe though? What would you suggest in a situation like this, not a trade recomendation but I guess would you think the euro is breaking the trend or still in it?
Sorry, I am in a trade so I am limited in what I can look at. Find out why the charts are different. This is important so you know what is going on. For ex. Tradstation can leave out holidays. eSignal completes their hour bar where another may complete it 30 min later. Is it a refresh problem? Bad data? There are days missing so do your homework because it will happen again.
yeah from what it looks like thinkorswim cuts out the 25th, 26th, 27th of december, and starts again on the 28th for the futures and the currencies. where as the prophet chart skips only the 25th of december, which seems more logical to me for futures and currencies trading. well guess I should have looked closer at the charts, cost only a little bit of pain, as I am out of the trade and need to reassess the situation.
Now your next learning curve is to decide which is the correct approach. Most traders won't even know the difference exists.
from looking at the charts it would seem the prophet chart is the one a trader should follow. It seems crazy that thinkorswim would take out days that a currency would trade. Also if you look at the /dx chart on the thinkorswim chart it is missing the same days, showing a possible break in the channel as attached below, but if you were to include those days it would show the dollar index hit the channel support and possibly is continuing upwards. Will have to see this week if it is validated but my analysis goes with the prophet chart. but time will tell I guess. Also I will have to see if the dollar index traded those days. thanks for the advice and help, much appreciated.
Geez do any of you guys trade forex...Look closely: The TOS charts are on a "bid" basis not on a closing trade basis like the phophet charts. So you can have a bid up to a point and it will give you a greater range than if you had a close only chart. Thus the candle will appear to show a breakout. On a bid basis chart, what moved the candle is the bid, the closing price of the candle may not move at all and the changeing bid is used to create the candle. The gold square is the last trade the cyan is the bid and the purple is the ask. notice how the last price on the chart is the bid not the last trade. http://screencast.com/t/ZTlkZjg0O