Market Pulse Dashboard for ThinkOrSwim (Free Download)

Overview

In this tutorial I build a Market Pulse dashboard for ThinkOrSwim: custom watchlist columns that show which of the 4 Market Pulse stages each symbol is in, color the cell by stage, and count how many bars the stage has lasted. Click the column header and the whole watchlist sorts by trend.

I start from our free Market Pulse indicator code, make 4 changes that turn it into a custom quote with a bar counter, and copy it into a second column on 30-minute bars. It's for traders who run a scan and want to see which results have the longest trend, or a trend that started 1 bar ago, without opening every chart.

Key Takeaways

What the Market Pulse Dashboard Shows

The Market Pulse dashboard shows the Market Pulse stage of every symbol in a watchlist, with one column per timeframe. Each cell holds the stage name and a counter, so "Acceleration: 46" on the daily column means 46 daily bars in that trend.

The stage logic comes straight from our free Market Pulse indicator: three volume-weighted moving averages (VWMAs) and a variable moving average (VMA). That tutorial explains how each stage is decided. Here I cover turning it into a column.

Why Use a Watchlist Column for the Market Pulse

A Market Pulse column ranks a list of symbols by trend with one click on the header. In the video, the watchlist is filled by one of our bullish Squeeze scans, run on daily bars, so every symbol already has a bullish bias. The usual next step is to go through each result with backtesters to find the strongest stock to trade.

Sorting the column does the first pass for you. Here's what I look for in the sorted list:

• The longest trend. The highest Acceleration count. In the video, Western Union led the list with 46 bars in a row, the most bullish trend of the group.
• The newest trend. Acceleration: 1. AR, EOG and GRA sat at the top of the sorted list, where the Market Pulse had turned green 1 bar ago, and the chart I had up showed the same.
• Pullback candidates. The gray accumulation cells. That's where I'd look for a greater chance of a pullback.

How to Import the Shared Columns

The Market Pulse dashboard download is a .txt file with 2 ThinkOrSwim shared links, one for the daily column and one for the 30-minute column. To import one:

1. Click Setup in the top right corner of ThinkOrSwim and choose Open shared item.
2. Paste the link and click Preview.
3. Check the name under Import item as, then click Import. ThinkOrSwim confirms the custom quote was imported.
4. Open your watchlist's Customize window, type "market pulse" in the search and add the column.

Our guide on how to import a shared item into ThinkOrSwim covers shared items step by step.

How to Build the Column From the Indicator Code

The Market Pulse dashboard code starts as a copy of the Market Pulse indicator code, so install that free study first if you're building along with the video. Then set up the column:

1. Open Studies, click the scroll icon next to the Market Pulse to see its code, and copy all of it. A text editor works too.
2. If there's no watchlist on the left side of your chart, click the add gadget icon and choose Watchlist.
3. Click the cog icon on the watchlist and choose Customize.
4. Type "custom quote" in the search, or pick custom quotes from the dropdown, and click the scroll icon next to one of them.
5. Open the thinkScript Editor tab, paste the code, name the column Market Pulse and set the aggregation to D for daily bars.

The pasted code needs the 4 changes below.

The 4 Code Changes

The Market Pulse dashboard takes 4 changes to the indicator code. The first 3 make it work as a column, which shows only the label's text and color, and the 4th adds the bar counters. If labels are new to you, our AddLabel tutorial explains the function the column is built on.

1. Remove the Chart Bubbles and Turn the Inputs Into Defs

Delete the ChartBubblesOn input and the chart bubble code at the bottom. Then change the two remaining inputs to def, since the 10-bar length and the close never change:

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The length of 10 is the same VMA length the indicator uses.

2. Change the VMA Plot to a Def

The column should show only the label text, so plot VMA = asd; becomes a def:

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ThinkOrSwim then flags VMA.setDefaultColor, because only a plot can take a default color. Delete that line and the VMA.AssignValueColor line under the label.

3. Change the Label Text and Add a Background Color

Remove "Stage: " from each label so the cell shows only the stage name. Replace the label's stage colors with one text color, and add AssignBackgroundColor with the same conditions the label uses.

The download has only shared links, so this line is rebuilt from what I say in the video. It uses the label's conditions, including >= for acceleration, with the colors I ended on:

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White text was hard to read on the colored cells, so I switched it to Color.BLACK.

I also tried cyan for accumulation, then went back to gray because it looks cleaner. Orange stays for distribution. Change any of these colors to suit your screen.

4. Add the Counters

Each counter adds 1 to its own value from the bar before while its condition holds, and resets to 0 when it doesn't. Here is the bullish counter, written out from the video:

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Then add it to the label text, as "Acceleration: " + bullishCounter.

On my daily chart the column showed an acceleration count of 3 at that point. Counting back 3 candles matched, and the candle before them was still gray. I then built a bearish counter the same way for deceleration, plus counters for accumulation and distribution, and added each one to its stage's text.

Adding a 30-Minute Column

The Market Pulse dashboard gets a second timeframe from a copy of the same code in another custom quote. In the video I add a 30-minute column next to the daily one:

1. Copy the finished daily code.
2. In Customize, open the custom quotes list and click the scroll icon on another custom quote.
3. Delete its code, paste yours, give it a name that shows the timeframe, and set the aggregation to 30 minutes.
4. Rename the first column too, for example to Market Pulse daily, so you can tell the two apart.

Each column takes up one of your custom quote scripts, so add as many or as few timeframes as you need. In the video I note that you can keep using the import method to add more. For more on timeframes in thinkScript, see our tutorial on aggregation periods.

Customizing the Counter and Colors

The Market Pulse dashboard code is a starting point, and the video shows where to change it. The background colors are one line, so swapping gray for cyan takes a few seconds.

The counters can track whatever run you care about. In the video I suggest counting consecutive acceleration and accumulation bars: a bullish counter that keeps counting through green and gray bars and resets to 0 only when the stage turns bearish. Test any change on a chart by counting candles, the way I checked the first count.

Members who want a higher timeframe trend on the chart itself can use the MTF Market Pulse.

How I Read the Dashboard

The Market Pulse dashboard sorts a list by trend, and I still open the chart before deciding anything. AR's count of 1 looked like a fresh start, and its chart showed a strong bullish trend before that bar. A long count shows how far a trend has run. It says nothing about where to enter.

With daily and 30-minute columns side by side, you can see whether a daily trend is also trending on the shorter timeframe. Before you trade a name from the list, decide where your stop goes and size the position so a stop-out costs a small, fixed share of your account.

For more watchlist columns, see our free Squeeze Dashboard and the rest of our dashboards.

Common Problems and Fixes

• "Cannot set default color" error. You changed plot VMA to def. Delete the VMA.setDefaultColor line.
• The cell shows colored text on a plain background. Remove the label's color conditions and add the AssignBackgroundColor line.
• The text is hard to read. Use Color.BLACK for the label text.
• The column's stage doesn't match the line on your chart. You may have older Market Pulse code. The updated indicator's label matches the line exactly, so download it again before you copy the code.

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Questions

Goes with

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