Are you looking for the best forex charts to help you make informed trading decisions? Forex trading is a fast-paced and dynamic market, where having access to accurate and reliable charts is crucial for success.
This article dives into some of the best forex charts available in the market today. From user-friendly interfaces to advanced technical analysis tools, these charts offer a range of features to help you analyze market trends and make profitable trades. Whether you are trading on your computer or mobile device, these charts will provide you with the insights you need to navigate the forex market with confidence.
Quick Look: Best Forex Charts
- Best Broker with Powerful Forex Charts: FOREX.com
- Best for all Traders: Trading View
- Best for Futures Trading: NinjaTrader
- Best for Web-Based: StockCharts
Best Forex Charts
Take a look at the recommendations from Benzinga that make the cut for best forex charts.
Best Broker with Powerful Forex Charts: FOREX.com
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
The products and services available to you at FOREX.com will depend on your location and on which of its regulated entities holds your account
FOREX.com allows you to create new orders directly from their charts with a simple click and drag to edit an existing order. They offer over 80 technical indicators from Bollinger Bands, MACD, Parabolic SAR, customizable indicators and much more. Allowing you to utilize the chart that matches your trading style.
You’ll have access to 14 time intervals to help identify trading patterns using specific time intervals. You can choose options such as one-minute, daily, monthly and more. FOREX.com has multiple chart types and styles to customize what you need and clearly identify trend lines. Additionally, you’ll have access to over 50 drawing tools with undo and redo buttons along with tons of customizable features to tailor everything to your needs.
Pros
- Clear, user-friendly charts and platform
- Fully customizable
- Packed with features
- Available on mobile and web platforms
Cons
- Can be confusing for beginning traders
Best for All Traders: TradingView
TradingView is a cloud-based charting platform that connects a network of 15 million professional and amateur traders and investors.
The platform features over 200,000 trading ideas per month with thousands of custom scripts and indicators for retail traders. If you’re planning to trade directly from the platform, you will have to connect it to one of the supported brokerages.
TradingView also offers a free mobile app, so you can access the market data from anywhere.
The basic account offers a majority of the platform functions — worldwide market data coverage, smart drawing tools, customizable chart types and even strategy backtesting.
Premium plans start at $14.95 per month and offer perks like server-side alerts, data export and custom time intervals.
Pros
- 12 chart types available
- Various charts are customizable
- Bar replays allow you to rewind and watch the speed and resolution of the user’s choice
- Up to 8 charts per tab
- Spreads allow for defined custom formulas
Cons
- Unsatisfactory customer support as compared to industry standards
Best for Futures Trading: NinjaTrader
NinjaTrader is an online forex broker known for its futures trading services which are among the most popular on the market. It also offers forex market charts for trading currency pairs.
Contrary to its cloud-based services, NinjaTrader has a state-of-art standalone platform. But, it requires installation, and since it offers plenty of functionalities, it can be an overwhelming experience for new traders.
NinjaTrader’s platform is free to use with all funded brokerage accounts ($400 for futures or $50 for forex) and offers chart feeds, market analysis as well as backtesting capabilities.
The platform also features Ecosystem, a 3rd-party developer community that offers thousands of 3rd-party apps and add-on tools that you can integrate. In case you are C# proficient, you can build your own add-ons.
Along with the developer community, the NinjaTrader platform offers plenty of educational materials, on-demand training videos and an informative YouTube channel.
Pros
- Powerful analysis tools
- Simulated trading and free download
- Open source trading apps to enhance the trading experience
Cons
- No mobile app
- Can only trade derivatives like futures and options
Best for Web-Based: StockCharts
StockCharts is a web-based charting platform. It provides free charting tools, available without registration.
Although somewhat archaic from a design standpoint, this is a functional platform that provides services that are otherwise hard to find — like point-and-figure, seasonality or dynamic yield curve charts. Advanced investors who are familiar with the sector rotation will benefit from the relative strength and momentum charts.
When it comes to forex charting, StockCharts offers a CandleGlance feature that allows you to see up to 12 mini-charts side by side — allowing for a quick market overview at once. One of the latest additions is StockChartsACP, an advanced platform that allows dynamic charting, indicator customization, server alerts and both free and paid plug-ins.
StockCharts is free to use, with premium options that offer the benefits like historical data, multichart layouts and direct trading starting at $14.95 per month.
Pros
- Custom code scan criteria
- Customizable alerts via email or SMS
- Multiple charts available
Cons
- Limited real time data available
- Lack of interactive charts
- Free version includes display adds
Why Use a Forex Chart?
Forex charts are visual representations of historical price movements. Using a forex chart relies on analyzing the patterns to find periods where history is likely to repeat itself. This goes back to 18th century Japan when savvy traders used patterns to predict prices of rice.
Pattern recognition relies on the fact that price presents the current consensus among market participants (buyers and sellers). This consensus oscillates between fear and greed with the periodical influence of news.
Common Types of Forex Charts
These are the main styles of forex charts:
Tick Chart
Tick charts display price updates in the form of bars, with each bar representing a tick. Price updates can occur multiple times per second, with changes ranging from small to significant. Unlike candlestick charts, tick charts are not based on time intervals but instead show the smallest level granularity for measuring intervals.
Line Chart
The line chart is the simplest, most basic form of the chart. It connects the closing prices of the selected time period and provides little other info. While limited, a line chart is handy when it comes to assessing the trend — as it makes spotting the cues like higher highs and higher lows.
Bar Chart
A chart that shows both high and lows. It has 3 visual cues embedded in a single line. One vertical line shows the size of the move within a period, a small point on the left shows the opening level and a small point on the right indicates the closing level.
Candlestick Chart
An improved version of the bar chart, it has 2 main elements — body and shadows. The body of the candlestick shows the range between the opening and closing prices. The size of the body shows the size of the move within a certain period. Meanwhile, a candlestick can have an upper shadow, a lower shadow, both or neither. Shadows give cues on price retracements and future price movements.
Heiken-Ashi Chart
The Heiken-Ashi chart is an improved candlestick that uses averages to track trends. Because the candlesticks on a Heiken-Ashi chart are more uniform, you can easily track the performance of any asset instead of reading between the lines to find upward and downward trends.
Renko Chart
Renko charts post bricks when the price of a currency pair moves a certain amount. You can follow the bricks, knowing how much the price is shifting from one brick to another. This is an easy way to track trends and also internalize how much the pairing is changing without doing any extra math.
Point and Figure Chart
Point and figure charts use Xs and Os to measure the change in price of a currency pairing over long periods of time. By adding only Xs and Os, you can track 1-year, 5-year and 10-year trends or more on a small chart. These final 3 (Heiken-Ashi, Renko or Point and Figure) are the best forex charts for reducing risk and clarifying market data.
Pattern recognition and exploitation are the basic premises behind the best forex charts. Due to their efficiency, Japanese candlestick patterns rose in popularity in recent decades. Great reading on the topic is “Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns” by Thomas N. Bulkowski.
It's a Game of Patterns and Patience
Regardless of whether you are a beginner, intermediate or an advanced investor — today even the free forex charting services will meet your needs.
The basic premise behind using charts to predict price movement comes from the inherent ability to look for patterns. Over the millennia, human brains evolved to recognize and exploit patterns, and that drove the rise of this civilization.
Yet, the brain still retained its primitive parts responsible for traumatic responses. When faced with market-induced anxiety, this response can be a significant risk to any traders' performance.
Regardless of the pattern-spotting abilities, only the traders that manage to enforce self-discipline will become consistently successful.
Trade Forex Charts with Benzinga’s Best Forex Brokers
Trading forex is impossible without relying on a reputable broker. Check out our comparison of forex brokers that might help you start trading on the currency markets today.
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
The products and services available to you at FOREX.com will depend on your location and on which of its regulated entities holds your account
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
CFD trading is not available to U.S. users. 76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you get rich by trading forex?
While getting rich by trading forex is not impossible, it is very hard to achieve. An old 90-90-90 rule says that 90% of traders lose 90% of their capital within 90 days. This is because trading requires patience, planning and significant self-control.
Even so, getting rich is not impossible — it is just improbable. When you spot individuals making claims about fortunes made on forex (and other markets), be ready to question their motives.
Which chart is best for forex?
There are 3 main chart styles in forex: line chart, bar chart and candlestick chart.
While it depends on personal preference — the most used type in forex are candlestick charts. They originate from 18th century Japan where they were developed by Munehisa Homma, a Japanese rice trader. Eventually, they were brought to the Western world by Steve Nison who wrote the book “Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques.”
Get a Forex Pro on Your Side
FOREX.com, registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), lets you trade a wide range of forex markets with low pricing and fast, quality execution on every trade.
You can also tap into:
- EUR/USD as low as 0.2 with fixed $5 commissions per 100,000
- Powerful, purpose-built currency trading platforms
- Monthly cash rebates of up to $9 per million dollars traded with FOREX.com’s Active Trader Program
Learn more about FOREX.com’s low pricing and how you can get started trading with FOREX.com.
About Stjepan Kalinic
Forex, Equity Analysis, and Financial Education