Although drawings can be extremely useful in technical analysis, they seldom provide trading data per se; it’s their interaction with the price plot that is of the greatest interest for chartists. This is why you are provided with the Drawing Alerts feature; it enables you to be the first to know when your drawing gets involved in a "special relationship" with the price plot*, that is to say, the two intersect at some moment.
Not all drawings and charts are eligible for issuing alerts: drawings need to be applied to the price subgraph and consist exclusively of straight lines (namely, Trendline, Channel, Regression Line, Regression Channel, Fibonacci Retracements, Fibonacci Extensions, Andrew's Pitchfork, Fibonacci Fans, and Price Level), charts cannot be Heikin Ashi or Equivolume type or use a tick or range aggregation. In addition, the Monkey Bars and the Seasonality chart modes are not supported. If both the chart* and the drawing meet these criteria, follow these steps to create an alert:
1. Add a drawing to the chart. In case you forgot how to do that, read this article. Suggestion: enable drawing extensions; this will make it possible to issue an alert for a crossing event in the future (if, of course, the expected intersection happens).
2. Right-click the drawing and choose Create alert with drawing.... The Create Alert window will appear. Note that if the drawing consists of multiple lines, you need to right-click exactly upon the line for which you would like to issue an alert. If you prefer to be alerted on intersections with other lines in the drawing, you will have to go through these steps for each line.
3. In the Create Alert window, specify when and how you prefer to be notified:
- In the Intrabar price list, select Crosses below to be notified when the price plot crosses the drawing in the downwards direction, Crosses above for the opposite, or just Crosses when the direction is not that important.
- Add a note to be displayed in your alert book if you need one.
- In the Notify with list, you can select a sound for the alert. Click the Play button to make sure you like it.
4. Click Create. The alert will be added to your alert book. You can also be automatically redirected to the alert book right after you create the alert by selecting the corresponding checkbox in the bottom left corner of the dialog window.
After that, all you have to do is wait until the intersection happens. Once this happy moment comes, you will be notified with a message announcing the price chart of which symbol has crossed which drawing at which level. And it's up to you to decide what's going to happen next.
*Drawing alerts are only available on the main subgraph of time charts that display unmodified price. Alerts are disabled when:
- Chart aggregation is tick or range.
- Chart type is Heikin Ashi or Equivolume.
- Chart mode is Monkey Bars or Seasonality.
- OnDemand mode is enabled.
- Log scale is enabled.
- Adjust for contract changes is on.
- Chart is open on the thinkBack tab.
- Any of the drawing's key points is out of the current time period (e.g., when you drag the drawing so that one of its key points is not visible or when you switch to a shorter time period and the drawing is no longer fully contained within chart's limits).