Commodities Tracker for ThinkOrSwim (Free Download)

Overview

In this tutorial I build a commodities tracker for ThinkOrSwim: one study that shows 10 commodity futures as a row of labels, each colored by its Market Pulse stage. Gold, silver, crude oil, copper, natural gas, soybeans, corn, wheat, platinum and palladium fit in one view on any chart.

I build it from our sector Utility Labels code with a find-and-replace trick, then use it to look for opportunities while stocks were going sideways and money was flowing into commodities. It's for traders who want to see the whole commodity group at a glance and spot the markets that don't match the rest.

Key Takeaways

What the Commodities Tracker Does

The Commodities Tracker is a ThinkOrSwim study that tracks the market stage of 10 commodity futures at once. It draws no lines. It adds a row of labels to the top of whatever chart you load it on, one label per commodity, so you can read the whole asset class at a glance.

I built it because commodities were drawing in big money while stocks went sideways. Gold, silver and crude oil had big rallies, some to new all-time highs, and I wanted to find the markets that still had room to join. Corn was one of them, and I only found it through this tracker.

The Market Pulse Behind Each Label

The Market Pulse is our substitute for moving averages, and it drives every label in the tracker. On a chart it draws one line in one of 3 colors: green for acceleration, red for deceleration and gray for accumulation or distribution. One line means no guesswork and no reading of 4 or 5 moving averages.

The tracker applies the same non-discretionary stage rules to 10 markets at once. Each label's color comes from 2 checks: how the 8, 21 and 34-bar volume-weighted moving averages (VWMAs) are stacked, and where the close sits against the VMA. The table shows how they combine.

Our Market Pulse indicator tutorial explains the 4 stages and the code in full.

The 10 Commodities in the Tracker

The Commodities Tracker follows 10 futures contracts, the major commodities I think are worth tracking. Each label shows the market's name and its symbol.

The code reads each futures contract directly, so the labels show the same 10 markets whatever symbol is on your chart. If you'd rather track an ETF, plug its symbol in instead, for example GLD in place of /GC for gold.

How to Build the Tracker From the Utility Labels Code

The Commodities Tracker starts from our sector Utility Labels code, which already tracks a group of symbols in labels. We have Utility Labels for the broad sectors and for market internals, and this build makes a set for commodities. The sector code, TI_UtilityLabels_SectorsSTUDY.ts, comes in the download on our Market Pulse tutorial, and our sector performance tutorial covers the Utility Labels themselves.

1. Create a new study and paste in the sector Utility Labels code. It still shows the sector ETFs, starting with XLK.
2. In the first block, rename the XLK price and volume variables to GC and change the symbol to the gold futures contract. ThinkOrSwim then flags every line that still says XLK.
3. Copy the rest of the XLK block into a plain text editor, such as Notepad on a PC or TextEdit on a Mac.
4. Press Ctrl+H, find XLK, replace all with GC, and paste the block back over the old one.
5. Change the label text from Technology to Gold and click Apply.
6. Repeat for each block: XLV (healthcare) becomes SI for silver, XLF (financials) becomes CL for crude oil, and so on through the 10 commodities.

Find-and-replace saves you from fixing every variable by hand, which gets tedious across 10 blocks. I did gold, silver and crude oil on camera and finished the other 7 with the video paused.

The finished study is in the download and the Code tab. Our guide on how to import a study into ThinkOrSwim covers the import.

How Each Commodity Block Works

Each commodity block is the full Market Pulse calculation for one futures contract. The gold block is below, and the other 9 differ only in the 2-letter prefix and the symbol.

Price and Volume

The Market Pulse needs 2 inputs per market, the close and the volume, so each block starts by pulling both from its futures contract. The symbol parameter is what keeps the labels independent of your chart.

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The Variable Moving Average

These lines are the variable moving average, the one line the Market Pulse draws. GCtmp1 and GCtmp2 hold each bar's up move and down move, and GCd2 and GCd4 add them up over length bars.

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GCad3 turns those sums into a momentum reading from -100 to 100, with GCcond guarding against a divide by zero.

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The VMA then moves toward price by a factor that grows with that reading. In a strong trend it follows price quickly, and in a choppy market it flattens out.

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The Volume-Weighted Moving Averages

A volume-weighted moving average weights each close by its volume, so heavy-volume bars pull it harder. The block computes 3 of them, over 8, 21 and 34 bars. Each one sums volume times price and divides by the sum of volume.

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The Stage and the Label

GCbullish is 1 when the 8 is above the 21 and the 21 is above the 34, and GCbearish is the reverse. The label tests acceleration first, then deceleration, then uses the VMA to split everything else into yellow and orange.

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GCdistribution is also calculated in each block, but the label doesn't use it.

Inputs and Settings

The Commodities Tracker has one input, length, which sets the VMA length for all 10 markets. The default is 10.

Adding More Commodities

Adding a commodity to the tracker takes one more block, built the same way as the first 10. Copy any block, find-and-replace its 2-letter prefix with a new one, change the symbol in the close and volume lines, and edit the label text. Each block needs its own prefix, since 2 blocks with the same variable names won't compile.

What the Tracker Showed in the Video

The Commodities Tracker in the video had 8 of 10 commodities in a market stage of acceleration, nearly 80% of the group. Read as one asset class, that said full steam ahead: money was flowing into commodities. The 2 exceptions were soybeans and corn, and I looked at each.

Soybeans: Accumulation

Soybeans had a gray Market Pulse line, a stage of accumulation, and a lot of chop. A breakout above 1080 would switch the line back to green and could bring soybeans in line with the other commodities. Next to gold and silver, though, soybeans didn't show the same strength.

The 20-year seasonality for soybeans showed January and February as solid months, March as one to avoid, April as solid and the summer months as weak, with strength picking up in October, November and December. Historically, that pointed to more chop first. For seasonal charts like these, see our Seasonal Analysis indicator.

Corn: Deceleration

Corn was the one commodity in deceleration, with a red Market Pulse. I had run Fibonacci extensions on its move, and price was slamming right into the 428 level. A hold at 428 and a bounce would look like the bottom end of a bear channel on the weekly chart.

I marked 428 to 420 as the zone to build a position, since price could slip toward 420. Seasonality didn't help much: the 20-year pattern showed weak summer months and strength from October to December, and the 5-year pattern had August and September picking up.

Playing Corn Intraday

The setup I picked for corn was a 15-minute opening range breakout, the 9:30 to 9:45 range, to the long side and possibly the short side. I tested it with the opening range breakout backtester that comes with a Volatility Box membership, set to a full range stop and a half range target.

Trading the intraday breakout means you don't take overnight risk until a signal gives you a reason to. Our free Opening Range Breakout indicator draws the range, and members can test settings with the ORB backtester. The Fibonacci Trading Course covers extensions like the one on corn.

How I Use the Commodities Tracker

The Commodities Tracker sorts commodities into 2 groups for me. The markets in acceleration are candidates for buy-the-trend, buy-the-pullback setups: simple trend pullbacks and retests of previous highs. The outliers, like corn in the video, are where I look for trades with a skewed risk-to-reward ratio.

A label color is a read on the market stage. Pick the setup on the chart, decide where the stop goes before you enter, and size the position so a stop-out costs a small, fixed share of your account.

Common Problems and Fixes

Most Commodities Tracker problems come up while you edit the starting code:

• The labels still show sector names. The starting code is unchanged. Each block needs its symbol and label text edited.
• "No such variable" errors. You renamed the price and volume variables but not the lines below them. Run find-and-replace on the whole block.
• A label you don't want. Delete that commodity's block, or set showCommodities to no in the code to hide them all.
• Stages that flip too often or too slowly. Change length. A higher number makes the VMA slower to react. The download's default is 10.

For more free studies, browse our ThinkOrSwim indicators.

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