Replay
Replay a chart from any point in its history – the candles rebuild tick by tick in time-lapse, with pace and zoom that follow the action.
What replay does
Replay plays a chart back from a point in the past. The candles after that point disappear and rebuild from the recorded trades (ticks) in time-lapse, the same way a live candle forms: the running candle grows with every trade, and a new one opens when its interval starts. Intervals without trades get a flat candle at the last close. Finished candles end with exactly the real open, high, low and close.
Replay is available on desktop for signed-in accounts whose plan includes Play mode – see Account. Without it, the Play button and the shortcut don't appear.
Start and stop
- Scroll the chart so that the candle you want to start from is the last one visible at the right edge.
- Click Play in the dock on the right, or press
Alt+R(⌥+Ron a Mac).
If the chart is at the live edge, replay starts from the candle in the middle of the chart instead. The chart slides the start candle to the left, then the clock starts slowly and picks up speed.
To stop, press Esc, click Stop in the dock (the Play button turns into Stop while a replay runs), or use the stop button in the replay bar. Switching the market or the timeframe also ends the replay. When it stops, the real chart comes back: the candle at the replay time stays where it was, and the real candles that follow appear to its right, including any live updates that arrived in the meantime.
Replay works on timeframes up to the daily chart (D). If there is nothing to the right of the start point, a message asks you to scroll back in time first.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Space | Pause or resume |
+ / - | Faster or slower |
H | Hide or show the replay bar, for example for screen recordings |
Esc | Stop the replay |
Each press of + or - changes the speed by a factor of 1.5, up to 16 times faster or slower than the automatic pace.
Automatic pace and zoom
The pace follows how eventful the stretch ahead is. Replay slows down and zooms in ahead of your own paper trading executions on this market, spike wicks (where violent runs turn, often liquidation cascades) and sudden jumps in range, volume or price. Through quiet stretches it runs faster and zooms out. The price axis follows the visible candles, and near a spike wick the action moves towards the middle of the chart.
The replay bar
While a replay runs, a bar at the top of the chart shows:
- REPLAY and the date and time of the replay clock, in your display time zone.
- The speed compared to real time, for example ×120. "loading ticks…" means the clock waits for tick data.
- A meter for how eventful the current stretch is – the higher it is, the slower and closer the replay runs.
- ~N approx. when candles had no tick data. These candles are rebuilt from their real open, high, low and close instead.
- Pause and stop buttons, and a reminder of the keys.
"Loading ticks…" appears while the replay prepares, "End of data" when it reaches the newest data.
What changes during a replay
- The legend shows the values of the running candle.
- Your paper trading executions appear when the replay clock reaches them. Text drawings attached to a candle appear once that candle has formed.
- The Session Volume Profile (Ticks) indicator grows with the replay clock.
- The crosshair, the chart menu, the drawing tools, the paper trading lines and the seconds chart are off until the replay ends.
Music
If the music player in the status bar has a track standing at 0:00 when you press Alt + R, the track starts together with the replay – handy for screen recordings. Starting with the Play button in the dock does not start the music.