Guide 3.5
Beginner, 6 min read. Checked with Scalpel 1.12.8 on .
In short
Each desk's chart shows candles from 10 seconds to daily, built from Interactive Brokers' own history and live bars, with volume, a session VWAP anchored at the 04:00 ET pre-market open, the 9 and 20 EMAs, a MACD pane and a buy-minus-sell delta pane. Switch timeframes with the 10s, 1m, 5m, 1h and 1d buttons, zoom with the mouse wheel, drag to pan, and pan to the oldest bar to load more history. No TradingView subscription or other data feed is needed.
The chart is where you see the shape of the move: where price sits against VWAP, whether the pullback is holding the 9 EMA, where the last high was. It also shows your trade: the entry, stop and target lines with what each would make or lose.
Before you start
| Layer | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Candles | Green when a bar closes up, red when it closes down. The symbol is watermarked faintly in the corner. |
| Volume | Bars along the bottom of the price pane, coloured like their candle. |
| VWAP | The thick yellow line: the average price paid today, weighted by volume (glossary). |
| EMA 9 and EMA 20 | Exponential moving averages: 9 in blue, 20 in orange. The 9 hugs price in a strong move; the 20 is slower. |
| Round-dollar levels | Faint lines at whole and half dollars, where traders often put orders. |
| MACD | The first sub-pane: MACD 12, 26, 9, with the MACD line in blue, the signal line in orange and the histogram (glossary). |
| Delta | The second sub-pane: shares bought at the ask minus shares sold at the bid, over a rolling 10 seconds (grey), 1 minute (blue) and 5 minutes (amber), each tagged on the axis. Above zero, buyers are taking more than sellers. |
| Trade bubbles | Circles at the time and price of the biggest trades since the stock loaded: green for buys at the ask, red for sells at the bid, sized by the trade. By default the top 20% by size of those on screen. |
| Warrant and offering lines | Orange dashed lines at prices where the company's filings let new shares be sold, when there are any (guide 9.6). |
| Your position | The entry line with your live P&L and R, the red working stop and the green take-profit, each with what it would make or lose (guide 5.2). |
Every layer can be switched off in the chart's cog (guide 2.3). The 9, 20, VWAP and MACD set is the standard toolkit of small-cap momentum trading, the style taught by Ross Cameron of Warrior Trading that Scalpel was built around. (Scalpel is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by him or Warrior Trading.)
Click a timeframe button above the chart. Each desk keeps its own; new desks open on the Default timeframe from the cog (1m unless you change it).
| Button | Bar | History loaded with the stock |
|---|---|---|
| 10s | 10 seconds | About 4 hours |
| 1m | 1 minute | About 5 days |
| 5m | 5 minutes | About 2 weeks |
| 1h | 1 hour | About 3 months |
| 1d | 1 day | About 1 year |
The history and the live bars both come from Interactive Brokers, so there is no seam where one meets the other. A daily candle covers the whole extended session, pre-market through after-hours.
Need more? Drag the chart to the right until you reach the oldest bar. Scalpel loads the stretch before it, one page at a time, and keeps your place. Interactive Brokers keeps 10-second bars for only about six months; 1-minute and longer go back years.
Scalpel's VWAP starts at 04:00 ET, the pre-market open, and runs all day, so the pre-market volume that built the gap counts. Before 04:00 it starts from the overnight session at 20:00 ET the evening before. It is worked out from the 1-minute bars, so it is the same line on every timeframe, including 10s.
Many charting tools start VWAP at the 09:30 open, so if you compare, expect Scalpel's to differ in the morning. For a stock that gapped and traded heavily before the open, the pre-market anchored line is the one the pre-market buyers are measured against. The chart's Lost VWAP warning uses the same line (guide 3.6).
| Do this | To |
|---|---|
| Mouse wheel over the chart | Zoom in and out in time |
| Drag the chart | Pan through time |
| Drag the price axis up or down | Stretch or squash the price scale |
| Double-click the price axis | Go back to auto-fit |
| Pan to the oldest bar | Load older history |
While you hold a position, auto-fit keeps your stop and target in view when they are close to the candles (within about two candle ranges), so even a tight 10-second chart shows them. A level further away is pinned at the edge of the pane.
The chart runs on Interactive Brokers' own history and live data: the same feed as your book and tape, included in the market data you already pay IBKR for. There is no TradingView subscription and no separate chart data service. On Windows the chart is drawn with TradingView's free, open-source Lightweight Charts library (credited in Settings, About). On a Mac, and on Windows if that library cannot start, Scalpel draws the chart itself with a built-in chart that works the same way and shows the same layers except the Delta sub-pane (guide 13.12).
All options and defaults are listed in guide 2.3. Two worth knowing: switching off Quick-order buttons hides the order bar but leaves every hotkey working, and Verdict bar is the read bar.