There is a great feature included with Metatrader that you may not have discovered. It’s extremely convenient and one that a number of other platforms do not offer. Using the crosshair cursor, it is easy to measure the distance in pips from one price level on a chart to another. This helps in three ways.
- You can quickly figure out what the risk will be with the placement of your stop loss – without having to do math in your head.
- You can easily decide where to place a target for your anticipated profit at 2 or 3 or even 4 times risk.
- It makes back testing strategies a breeze.
Let’s see how it works. First, we need access to the drawing tools toolbar. If it is not already visible at one of the edges of your chart, click on View at the top of your screen on the Menu bar. Line studies is the second choice. Select it. You can grab the toolbar by left clicking and dragging it to any edge of the chart window. Now the crosshair should be visible just below or beside the arrow pointer.
Begin by simply left clicking the crosshair cursor. Without dragging yet, move your mouse with the crossed lines to any price level on the chart. Once it is positioned where you want it, left click again and drag the cursor to the desired spot. As you move, three numbers will appear. The first is the number of bars since the point of entry. The second is the number of pips. (You must add one decimal point. 463 is 46.3 pips.) The third number is the price at the end point of the measurement.
Here is a short video to demonstrate how to use it.
