Unlike standard candlestick charting software, Smart Charts uses deterministic logic to automatically shade the candle bars that match a price pattern, technical indicator, or volatility regime you choose. The system overlays visual highlights directly on the chart based on your criteria.
The Indicators panel draws lines on the price. The Analysis and Volatility panels shade bars: one by a price pattern, the other by what VIX was doing at the time.
Anatomy of an inside bar match
Core rule
An inside bar occurs when the current bar's entire high-to-low range falls strictly within the high-to-low range of the preceding bar. Turn on the overlay and it shades every candle that meets that test, with no scanning and no guessing.
Two bars in this stretch qualified. The brackets show exactly why each one was marked.
The three control panels
Each panel marks the chart a different way, and nothing here is a loose or approximate match. Every rule is one exact comparison, so a shaded band always means the same thing: this bar met the rule.
Panel
Function
Output
Indicators
Plots standard technical studies (moving averages, price levels, volume, RSI)
Line overlays and panes
Analysis
Highlights bars matching a specific price-action pattern
Shaded vertical bands
Volatility
Highlights macro market conditions based on VIX state
The available timeframe intervals depend on the ticker's liquidity and exchange data availability. Seven pills in all, and how many you get depends on the ticker.
Timeframe
Supported assets
Fallback / behavior
15m, 30m
SPX only
Hidden entirely on every other ticker
1H, 4H
All tickers
Switching from 15m SPX to another ticker shifts to 1H, the finest resolution that ticker offers
1D, 1W, 1M
All tickers
Fully supported across all assets
You can watch this happen: load SPX and the row shows seven pills; type SPY and it visibly narrows to five.
A bar is a bar
Anything counted in bars rather than dates counts differently per timeframe. The 52-week lines look back a fixed number of bars, so on the weekly chart that window covers far more than a year. The Volume Shelf is the exception: its 1M / 3M / 6M setting is rescaled per timeframe, so 6M means about six months whether you are on daily, weekly or monthly bars.
Chapter 3
The Indicators Panel
The Indicators panel houses thirteen studies organized into five sections. On a first visit only Volume is on, and every section is collapsed, so you start with a clean chart.
Section
Indicators
Specification
Moving Averages
SMA (5, 10, 20, 50, 200)
Simple moving averages only, with no exponential option. Each line needs a full lookback before it draws, so there is no partial-line stub at the left edge.
Levels
52W High/Low, Quarter High/Low
Quarter lines reset on the first trading session of January, April, July and October.
RSI
14-period RSI
Rendered in a dedicated lower pane that appears when enabled and disappears when off; synchronized one-way to the price pane's panning.
Overlays
Volume Histogram, Volume Shelf
Volume bars colored by close against their own open: green when close ≥ open, red when close < open.
Events
Earnings Dates
Tints the reporting session's bar and marks it "E". Moves to the next active session if the report lands on a weekend or holiday.
Two rows worth a closer look
The 52-week window is counted in bars, not dates, so on a weekly or monthly chart it stretches well beyond a year, and at the far-left edge it reflects only the bars available so far rather than a true one-year figure. The Volume histogram colors each bar by its close against its own open, matching the candle body, so a day that gapped down but closed above its open paints a green volume bar.
Special override rule: volatility ETFs
Loading a volatility-linked instrument (e.g., UVXY, VXX) overrides the standard indicators with a specialized spike-level interface. Your settings are preserved in the background and restore when you return to an equity or index, so they are bypassed rather than erased.
Chapter 4
The Analysis Panel (Pattern Overlays)
The Analysis panel offers seventeen pattern-matching rules, and every one shades matching bars rather than drawing a line. Several carry a stepper so you set the threshold yourself. Here are the exact rules, because a shaded bar is only useful if you know what it means:
Overlay
Execution rule
Default
Positive / Negative
Close(t) against Close(t−1), as a percentage
±2.0%
Gap Up / Gap Down
Open(t) against Close(t−1), as a percentage
±1.0%
Win / Lose Streaks
N consecutive bars closing above (or below) their own open
3 bars
Inside Bars
High(t) ≤ High(t−1) and Low(t) ≥ Low(t−1)
None
Bullish Engulfing
Prior bar red, this bar green, and this body covers the prior body
None
Breakout / Breakdown
Close(t) > High(t−1), or Close(t) < Low(t−1)
None
RSI Below / Above
14-period RSI reaches the threshold
30 / 70
Volume Above / Below
Volume against its 20-bar average, as a multiple
2.0× / 0.5×
Critical technical nuances
Returns versus gaps: a return (Positive/Negative) measures Close(t) against Close(t−1); a gap (Gap Up/Gap Down) measures Open(t) against Close(t−1). On the same chart, the two mark different bars.
Streaks are close against open: a streak evaluates Close(t) against Open(t), not against the previous close. A perfectly flat bar (close equals open) counts as a win, so it extends a win streak and breaks a losing one.
Breakouts use the prior bar only: a breakout is a close beyond High(t−1), not a 20-day or 52-week high, and it needs a close rather than a touch.
Reversals require a minimum move first: Bullish and Bearish Reversals require the bar to travel at least 1.0% away from its open in the wrong direction before recovering. That 1% is fixed, so setting the stepper below 1% does not loosen the setup; the stepper only sizes the recovery.
The Volatility panel tracks macro market volatility via VIX and overlays regime conditions on any asset's chart. All seven overlays track VIX rather than the ticker you are looking at, shading the stretches when the wider market was in a particular state so you can see how your ticker behaved in those windows.
All three families read VIX, not the chart's ticker. Regimes are set by the VIX open; term structure compares closes; divergence flips its definition on a volatility ETF.
Volatility execution rules
Open-price anchoring for regimes: the regime bands (under 20, 20 to 30, over 30) evaluate the VIX open, not its close. A session that opens at 19.9 and closes at 25.0 is classified as under 20.
Term structure uses closes: Contango and Backwardation compare the closing prices of spot VIX against front-month futures. If the futures data fails to resolve, those bands stay unshaded; an empty band means the data did not load rather than a calm market.
Divergence flips on volatility ETFs: on a volatility ETF the Divergence row relabels itself so it always names the odd pairing; on UVXY it reads VIX up plus UVXY down.
Chapter 6
Chart Operations & Controls
Four controls do most of the work, and the address bar is one of them.
Control
What it does
URL parameters
Pre-load the ticker, timeframe and active overlays from the address bar
Double-click
Quick-opens the style menu for a line, band, volume shelf or marker
Camera button
Renders a full-canvas PNG export, overlays included
Star button
Syncs the current ticker across your platform watchlists
Advanced shortcuts
URL state parameters: a standardized string (e.g., ?s=SPY) shares an exact chart state, timeframe and active overlays included, and it beats whatever was saved last time.
Orange marker highlights: a share link from a forecast tool paints certain dates orange. Those are matched days from that tool rather than one of your overlays, and they clear as soon as you refresh or change ticker.
Canvas export: the Camera tool builds a full-canvas PNG piece by piece, so it captures the off-chart elements, the volume shelf, band overlays and earnings tags, that a native screenshot would miss.
Unauthenticated access: signed-out sessions are limited to SPY, SPX and UVXY. Type any other ticker and the chart loads SPY instead, with a banner explaining why rather than failing.