Thirty charts open and the terminal crawls: what is actually eating the machine

[Shadow Trader]

A terminal with many charts open can feel fine on quiet days and fall apart in a fast market. Some of the things behind it get overlooked.

- Every chart redraws on every tick. Ten charts of the same pair on different timeframes means the same tick gets processed ten times, each with its own indicators.

- Indicators are the real cost, not the charts themselves. A chart with five custom indicators can cost more than five bare charts. Some recalculate their whole history on each new tick if written carelessly.

- Chart history length matters. Setting maximum bars in history and in the chart to a huge number means every indicator has far more to chew through, and every new tab pays that price.

- Objects add up. Hundreds of drawn lines, labels, and arrows left behind by scripts are redrawn constantly, and they slow down scrolling and switching.

- Symbols in the market watch list all stream quotes, even those with no open chart. A watchlist of fifty pairs means fifty feeds being processed.

- Memory use creeps upward over a week of uptime. A terminal that has not been restarted in a long time often behaves worse than a fresh one.

- Visual extras, such as high-detail themes and depth of market windows, take cycles that execution could use.

A practical check is to watch CPU use in the task manager during a news release. If it is pinned near the ceiling, the platform will start falling behind exactly when speed matters most.

What is your rough ceiling for open charts before the terminal starts to lag, and what gave you the biggest improvement when trimming?