What is Autochartist and how do you use it when trading?

What is Autochartist?

Autochartist is a program which can identify chart patterns using technical indicators such as Fibonacci retracements. It monitors the markets 24 hours a day, alerting you to trading opportunities in real time. Autochartist is often used on the MetaTrader 4 (MT4) platform, and you’ll get it for free when you download MT4 from IG.

Features and benefits of Autochartist

Autochartist’s features are designed to identify patterns in charts, with the main benefit being the real-time insights it generates for market movements. Autochartist is constantly scanning the markets on your behalf, and it gives you price alerts whenever a new opportunity presents itself. Its software is designed to identify trading opportunities for you based on support and resistance levels.

Support and resistance levels are the building blocks of technical analysis, and many effective trading strategies can be based around them. This is because support and resistance are like glass floors and ceilings which are often seen to limit a market's range of movement.

The reason these levels appear is due to the balance between buyers and sellers, or demand and supply. When there is more demand than supply, the price will rise. But, when there is more supply than demand, the price will fall.

Features of Autochartist

There are several features of Autochartist that traders might find useful. These include:

1. Algorithms that automatically analyse the markets
2. A customisable search pane
3. A built-in price movement scanner

Algorithms that automatically analyse the markets

The main feature of Autochartist is that it can automatically scan the markets on your behalf, identifying new opportunities that you might have otherwise missed. Its analysis is based on algorithms, which it seamlessly integrates into trading platforms such as MT4.

A customisable search pane

The Autochartist search pane enables users to define the parameters of the markets that the program scans. It can be tailored to your individual trading style, or you can use it to search markets that are less familiar and find opportunities that you may not have otherwise thought about.

A built-in price movement scanner

Autochartist can highlight the range in which a price has moved for a given period. This can be done on an hourly or daily basis and it enables traders to clearly see how susceptible a market is to price changes.

Benefits of Autochartist

Aside from its features, there are also a number of benefits to using the Autochartist program. The benefits of Autochartist include:

1. Chart pattern recognition
2. Faster analysis
3. Flexibility
4. Alerts

Chart pattern recognition

The pattern-recognition capabilities of Autochartist are a significant benefit of the software. For instance, Autochartist can analyse different candlestick chart patterns using the Ichimoku Cloud, Bollinger bands and Fibonacci retracements – as well as a host of other technical indicators.

Faster analysis

Autochartist can save you a lot of time that you would otherwise dedicate to scanning the markets manually. Technical analysis and chart pattern recognition are laborious tasks for a trader, and by using Autochartist to carry them out, you can spend more time developing your trading strategies or learning about new techniques that you think might be useful for you.

Flexibility

Autochartist is a flexible product because it is capable of highlighting thousands of potential trades a month in a range of financial markets, including forex and indices. It can do this on either a CFD trading account on the MT4 platform

Alerts

Autochartist can also alert you to opportunities that you might not usually consider. For example, it might identify that a currency pair – USD/JPY for example – has become highly volatile following an announcement by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) or the Bank of Japan (BoJ).

By providing you with alerts, Autochartist can make it less likely that you will miss out on an opportunity to profit.

What to be aware of before using Autochartist

First and foremost, Autochartist is an automated market scanning program, designed to save you time by analysing the markets on your behalf. It can alert you to opportunities by using technical indicators such as Fibonacci retracements as part of its market scanning capabilities.

However, Autochartist is not capable of executing trades for you. While it can highlight a potential trade, it remains up to you to open and close your positions, perhaps in line with what Autochartist has suggested or made you aware of.

Equally, while programs like Autochartist can scan the markets on their operator’s behalf, they are not foolproof, and you should carry out your own technical analysis and fundamental analysis alongside Autochartist to confirm any opportunities that the program identifies.

How to use Autochartist

Before you use Autochartist, you’ll need to make an IG account and download MT4. The steps to do this are explained below:

1. Create a live IG account

For a demo MT4 account, visit our MT4 demo account creation page

2. Once you have an account, visit your ‘My IG’ dashboard

3. Click on ‘add an account’ at the bottom right of the screen

4. Select an MT4 CFD account

5. Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the download process

Once you have created an IG account and downloaded MT4, open the platform and log in. Autochartist can be found within MT4 by going to the ‘navigator’ window and clicking on ‘scripts’.

Autochartist summed up

• In summary, Autochartist is a program which is capable of automatically recognising chart patterns and highlighting opportunities to you through alerts
• It can scan the markets for you 24 hours a day, meaning that you have more time to dedicate to trying out different trading strategies and improving your knowledge of the markets