Linking charts by symbol in a multi chart layout

[Fairman]

Linking charts by symbol in a multi chart layout

If you run several charts at once, say M1, M5 and M15 of the same pair, changing the symbol on all of them every time you switch pairs gets old fast. Linking charts by symbol solves it, and most platforms support it in some form.

TradingView has it built in for multi chart layouts. In the layout menu, turn on sync for symbol, and changing the symbol on one chart changes it on all of them. You can also sync the crosshair, the time and the interval separately. Syncing crosshair and time is especially handy, because moving over a bar on M1 highlights the same moment on M5.

cTrader has linked charts too, using colour groups. Charts in the same colour group switch symbol together, so you can have two groups for two pairs.

MT5 doesn't have this natively. There are free scripts and indicators that add symbol syncing between charts, and some trade panels include it. It's a bit fiddly to set up but works.

Why it matters for scalpers. Less clicking means fewer mistakes, like reading the M15 of one pair while the M1 shows another. That mistake is more common than people admit, especially when switching quickly between correlated pairs.

It also makes reviewing faster, because you can step through a trade on several timeframes at once.

[FXS London Scalper]

Symbol linking saves a lot of clicks, agreed. One small trap on MT5: linking also keeps the timeframe and chart objects separate, so levels drawn on EURUSD stay with that chart and do not follow when you switch to GBPUSD. That is usually what you want, but before London it is worth checking that the Asian high and low you marked are on the pair you are actually looking at. A quick habit is putting the pair name in the label text of each level.

[FXS Prop Desk]

Linking by symbol saves a lot of clicks. On MT5 the support is more limited, and many traders use a small script or a sync utility to get the same effect. In TradingView, linking the time interval or the crosshair as well can be useful for multi-timeframe work. The crosshair sync especially helps when checking whether an M1 signal lines up with an M15 level, without having to compare prices by eye.