Charts & the Signal Preview
Open price charts and read the hover preview that shows a signal's bars, entry, scale-in, stop, and target levels.
Tempest shows candlestick charts and a hover preview popup so you can review the price action and trade levels of a signal before acting on it.
Opening a Chart
Charts are opened from the Chart menu in the menu bar:
- New Chart Tab (
Ctrl+Shift+M) — opens a chart. If a chart area is already open, the chart is added as a new tab inside it; otherwise the chart area is created first. - Open Charts for All Today's Signals (
Ctrl+Shift+A) — opens one chart per symbol that has signals today. Each chart automatically overlays that symbol's signals and is identified by a watermark in the chart background.
See Desktops & Layout for arranging chart tabs and windows and saving your layout.
Note: Right-clicking a signal row does not open a chart. The signal-row right-click menu contains Resubmit Order and Resubmit Order Brackets only — see Positions & Orders. Use the Chart menu to open charts.
The Signal Hover Preview
When you move your mouse over a signal row in the Signals view, a small candlestick chart popup appears next to your cursor. It shows the bars leading up to the signal with the trade levels drawn on it. The popup is temporary — it disappears when the cursor leaves the row. If you hover over a position or order indented under a signal, the preview for the owning signal is shown.
📷 Screenshot: The signal hover preview popup floating beside a signal row, showing the candlesticks, the white entry triangle on the rightmost bar, the colour-coded level lines (white/yellow/red/green) tagged at the right edge, and the value legend along the bottom.
What the Preview Shows
The preview displays up to the last 10 bars ending at the signal, so you can see the price context the signal formed in. The header shows the symbol, the signal time (in PST), and a colour-coded LONG / SHORT pill.
Each candle is drawn in colour by direction (teal/green when the bar closed up, red when it closed down).
The Signal Bar
The rightmost bar in the preview is the signal bar — the bar that closed at the signal's trigger time. The trigger time shown in the Signals view is the close of this bar, so the signal bar is the last completed bar at that moment, not the bar that was still forming after it.
Bar Numbering
Bars are numbered starting at the regular trading session open:
- Bar 1 is the bar that opens at 06:30 PST (09:30 ET) on the signal's day — the regular-session open for the index futures Tempest follows. The number is printed just below each bar's low.
- Bars before the session open are not numbered. They are shown in a lightly shaded region tagged "‹ previous day", so you can still see overnight/pre-market price action leading into the open.
Entry & Exit Levels
Each trade level is drawn as a short dashed line confined to the signal bar (slightly wider than the bar, never spanning the whole chart) and tagged with its label and price at the right edge:
| Tag | Level | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| E | Entry price | White |
| SI1, SI2 | Scale-in entry levels (if the signal has them) | Yellow |
| S | Stop price | Red |
| T1, T2, T3 | Profit-target prices (one per target the signal carries) | Green |
The stop (S) shown is the widest stop — the same stop the engine would place — not a narrower interim stop. A legend along the bottom of the popup lists the exact numeric value of every active level (entry, scale-ins, stop, and targets) in the same colours.
See Brackets & Scale-In for what scale-in, stop, and target levels mean for an order.
Entry Triangle
A small white triangle is drawn at the entry price on the signal bar:
- Points up for a LONG signal, down for a SHORT signal.
- Solid (filled) triangle = a market-order entry.
- Hollow (outline) triangle = a limit-order entry.
The LONG / SHORT pill in the header echoes this: it is filled with the direction colour for a market entry and outlined for a limit entry, and its arrow is solid for market or hollow for limit. This tells you at a glance both the direction and whether the signal enters at market or at a limit price.
Where the Bars Come From
The preview bars are five-minute bars sourced from your Interactive Brokers historical data, which is continuous and has no feed gaps — so the signal bar is reliably present. Tempest pre-loads these bars for its baseline futures symbols (ES, NQ, MES, MNQ, YM, MYM, RTY, M2K) and refreshes them roughly every two minutes, so hovering usually shows the preview instantly. This requires Tempest to be connected to TWS or IB Gateway — see Connecting to Interactive Brokers.
If a symbol's bars have not been loaded yet, Tempest fills the popup from its own locally recorded data first so it never appears blank, then quietly upgrades the popup to the gap-free broker bars as soon as they arrive — while the hover is still active. If you are not connected to your broker, only the locally recorded bars are available and they may have gaps.
What the Preview Cannot Do
The hover preview is a read-only visualization for quick review. It does not let you modify the signal or its levels, and it shows only the last few bars around the signal — not a full, live, scrollable chart. For full charting, overlays, and order tracking, open a chart from the Chart menu.
Note: Trading futures carries substantial risk of loss. The bars and levels in the preview are informational only — they are not a recommendation or a guarantee of any outcome, and they reflect the signal's parameters, not a prediction. You alone are responsible for the trades you place. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Related Pages
- The Signals View — reading the signal hierarchy
- Connecting to Interactive Brokers — the broker connection the preview bars depend on
- Brackets & Scale-In — what the SI, S, and T levels mean
- Position Sizing — how size is derived from entry and stop
- Field & Term Glossary — definitions of E, SI, S, T, and order types
- Desktops & Layout — managing chart tabs and windows