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I've been testing a 100-tick chart alongside M1 for EURUSD at the London open. The idea is that in busy minutes a tick chart prints more bars, and in quiet minutes fewer, so the bar structure follows activity.

What I noticed in four weeks:

• Between 08:00 and 08:15 the tick chart prints about three bars per minute, so pullbacks are easier to see.
• After 10:30 it slows to a bar every two or three minutes, which helps me avoid entries in dead periods.
• Tick counts depend on the broker's feed. My two brokers give quite different numbers, so a 100-tick chart isn't the same on both.

Results so far are slightly better than M1 entries, but within noise. I'm continuing the test.

Anyone using tick charts for forex? How do you deal with the broker feed differences?

A scalper clicks "sell" at 8:30:01 and the platform freezes for three seconds. Terrible timing, and not entirely a coincidence.

News releases create a flood of ticks. A terminal that handles a few ticks per second in quiet times may face hundreds in the first moments. Indicators recalculate, charts redraw, EAs process every update. A machine with a modest processor or too many charts open can't keep up.

The usual suspects:

- Too many charts open at once, each with its own set of indicators
- Custom indicators that recalculate their whole history on every tick
- Anti-virus or backup software scanning files in the background
- A laptop on power-saving mode that throttles the processor
- Wi-Fi congestion, with packets delayed

Closing unused charts before major releases, shortening history loaded on each chart, and switching to a wired connection resolves a lot of it. Some traders keep a "news layout" with a single bare chart.

Another overlooked source is the platform's own history limit. Loading hundreds of thousands of bars per chart slows everything.

Memory is a hidden problem too. Terminals left open for weeks accumulate chart objects, journal entries, and cached history. A restart before a big session clears some of it, and takes one minute.

The platform's own "tick" load changes with the number of symbols in the Market Watch. Each symbol that is visible gets updates, even if no chart is open. On busy days, forty symbols streaming at once is a lot of work for a modest PC. Hiding unused symbols drops the load immediately.

For manual traders, one other habit helps: place pending orders ahead of the release with sizes and stops set, rather than trying to click quickly in the first second. The platform may freeze for a moment, but orders already in the queue are unaffected.

A test session using a replay of a past news event on a demo platform shows how the machine responds under load.

How bare can a chart get before it stops being useful during a big release?