Creating a new price chart template, and then adding the template to the Template Toolbar, are key features of BullCharts to help you work faster (and smarter). But there are times when the modifications to a template appear to be not working. That is, you make a change to a template and then save the modified template, but your changes are not recorded. For example, trying to add a horizontal line to the chart template. So, why is that the case, and how to overcome this?

The problem: The observation described above can occur if you try to add something to the chart that is “relevant to this security only”, such as a Horizontal Line.

The solution: The solution is simply to untick the option “This tool is relevant to this security”. The screen shot at right shows this for the “Horizontal Line Properties”, on the “Advanced” tab. When adding some chart tools to a price chart, the default value here is usually for this box to be ticked (you can change the default value – use the “Defaults…” button in the bottom left corner of the Properties dialogue box). Placing a horizontal line on a chart and then saving the chart as a template will not save this item.

See more details in an example below.

Example – Add Horizontal Line to the Trades and Value panes of a price chart

In this example we are looking for stocks that have a specific level of liquidity, so that we can build a stock universe that excludes the not-so-liquid stocks. The liquidity criteria (applied here in a BullCharts scan) are for recent daily Trades to be greater than 36, and the daily Value to be greater than $100,000.

In the Trades pane and the Val (Value) pane of the price chart example below we have included a horizontal, dotted green line at the values that are our threshold for liquidity. And having constructed this chart, it is now saved as a Template; but to do so we had to untick the “This tool is relevant to this security only” check box.