forex-scalping.com

The data window and reading exact candle values

Most chart reading is visual, which is fine. But sometimes you need the actual numbers for a candle: the exact high, the exact low, the open, the close, and the value of each indicator at that bar. Squinting at the price scale isn't good enough for that.

MT4 and MT5 both have a data window. Open it from the View menu or with Ctrl and D. When you move the cursor over any bar, it shows the date and time, OHLC, volume, and the value of every indicator on that chart. It updates as you move across bars.

TradingView has the same thing in the right panel under data window, and the legend at the top of the chart shows the values for the bar under the cursor as well.

Where this helps a scalper.

Placing stops and targets exactly. If you want your stop a pip beyond the low of a specific candle, the data window tells you the low to the point.

Checking indicator values at a past bar. If you're reviewing a trade and want to know if RSI was above 70 at the entry bar, it's right there.

Checking spreads on news bars. A huge wick that looks like a real move might show up in the data window as a bar with a very different high or low than its neighbours, a sign of a quote spike.

It's one of those tools that sits in the menu unused until you need it. Then it saves a lot of guesswork.

Time in the data window is server time in MT4 and MT5, not your local time. If you're checking a candle against a news release time, convert the release time to the broker's server time first. Otherwise you'll look at the wrong bar and draw the wrong conclusion. TradingView uses the time zone you've set in the chart settings, which might be your local time or UTC. Knowing which one you're looking at saves a lot of confusion when comparing screenshots from different platforms. Writing the server offset at the top of your session plan saves doing the conversion in your head while price is moving.

For backtesting by hand, the data window speeds things up a lot. Instead of guessing entries from the chart, step through bars and copy the exact OHLC values of the entry, stop and target candles into a sheet. It's slower than eyeballing but far more accurate. A few dozen trades recorded that way tell you more than hundreds of rough ones, because you know exactly what the strategy would have done with real prices rather than approximations that flatter it. It's slower, yes, but the extra accuracy shows up straight away in the results.

The data window also helps when an indicator doesn't seem to match. If you see a moving average cross on the chart but your EA didn't fire, check the exact values in the data window at that bar. Often the lines touched visually but didn't actually cross by the closing value, or the cross happened on the next bar. That small difference is the gap between what the eye sees and what code sees, and the data window shows it clearly. Most of the time it turns out the EA was right and the eye was rounding.

Custom indicators show up in the data window too, but only if their buffers are set to show there. Some poorly coded indicators don't expose their values, which makes them hard to check. If you rely on a custom indicator, see whether it appears in the data window. If it doesn't, ask the author or consider a different version. Being able to read the exact value at any bar is a basic requirement for an indicator you trade from. It's also a quick test of whether the author knew what they were doing.

Copying exact OHLC values also exposes something that eyeballing hides: whether the stop and target would have been hit in the same bar. When one candle touches both, the chart alone cannot tell which came first, and many manual backtests quietly count those as wins. Marking them as unknown, or checking a lower timeframe for the order, keeps the results honest. If those ambiguous bars are a large share of the sample, the stop and target are probably too close for the timeframe being tested.