NinjaTrader Chart Setup: Charts, Types & Workspaces

Opening your first chart

Everything on this page assumes NinjaTrader Desktop is installed and running. If it isn’t, the Getting Started guide takes you from download to a working platform in about 15 minutes, and the complete NinjaTrader guide covers the bigger picture. Platform running? Let’s build your charts.

Every new window in NinjaTrader — charts included — opens from the Control Center’s New menu. Open a new chart from there, choose the instrument you want to watch, and set up the data series: the bar type and interval the chart will display. Don’t agonize over the settings on day one — everything here can be changed later, and the next section explains the choices that actually matter.

Chart types worth knowing

The bar type you choose changes what a “bar” even means — and it shapes every read you take off the chart. NinjaTrader supports dozens of bar types. You need three:

• Candlestick — one bar per fixed time interval (1 minute, 5 minutes, a day). The default for good reason: nearly every book, video, and strategy discussion assumes it. If you’re new, start here and stay here for a while.
• Renko — bars build from price movement instead of time. A new brick prints only when price travels a set distance, which filters out sideways chop and makes trends much easier to see. The trade-off: time is distorted, so a clean-looking chart can hide hours of real waiting.
• Tick and volume bars — one bar per set number of trades (tick) or contracts traded (volume). Bars print quickly when the market is busy and slowly when it’s dead, so the chart paces itself to actual activity. Popular with short-term futures traders, and a natural fit alongside order flow tools that read the same activity.

For a deeper comparison — including the bar types we skipped — see the full guide to futures chart types. And if reading the bars themselves still feels new, how to read a price chart is the right primer.

One piece of advice: pick one bar type and learn it thoroughly. Switching chart types every week resets your pattern recognition to zero each time.

Adding and configuring indicators

Indicators live one right-click away: right-click chart → Indicators opens the window where you add, configure, and remove every indicator on that chart. Add the one you want, adjust its settings — inputs, colors, plots — and click OK.

Built-in indicators (moving averages, volume, and many more) are available immediately. Third-party add-ons — including ours — have to be imported into the platform first; the install indicators guide covers the two-minute import plus the fix for every common error, and once imported they appear in the same Indicators list as the built-ins. If you’re still choosing tools, browse our NinjaTrader indicators — every one is a lifetime license with free updates.

If a chart ever looks wrong after adding or updating an indicator — plots missing, values frozen — right-click chart → Reload NinjaScript refreshes every script on the chart without restarting the platform.

Workspaces and templates: build it once

A workspace is NinjaTrader’s word for your whole layout — every open chart, window, and panel, arranged the way you left it. NinjaTrader saves workspaces, so the setup you build today is the setup that greets you tomorrow. You should never be rebuilding charts session after session.

That makes the workspace worth building deliberately:

• Set it up once, properly. Instrument, bar type, indicators, window positions — get it the way you actually trade, then leave it alone. Tinkering during market hours is how good layouts die.
• Keep separate workspaces for separate jobs. Many traders run one workspace for morning prep, one for live trading, and one for review — and switch between them instead of rearranging windows.
• Use chart templates for repeatable charts. NinjaTrader also supports chart templates — a saved chart configuration (bar type, indicators, colors) you can reuse on new charts, so your fifth chart matches your first without redoing the setup by hand.

Keep your charts fast

Chart lag shows up as slow window dragging, delayed bar updates, and a platform that stutters exactly when the market is moving fast — the worst possible time. The causes are usually cumulative, and so are the fixes:

• Trim indicators per chart. One heavy or badly written indicator can drag down a whole chart. If a chart got slow recently, remove indicators one at a time until you find the culprit — it’s almost always one specific tool, not the platform.
• Load only the history you use. A chart loading months of data works far harder than one loading the days you actually look at.
• Close what you don’t watch. Every open chart and window consumes resources whether you’re looking at it or not.
• Restart the platform periodically. Long-running sessions accumulate memory usage. A restart is free, and your saved workspace means nothing is lost.

For the full checklist — including Windows-level settings — see our guide to optimizing NinjaTrader performance for fast-paced day trading.

Work faster with hotkeys

Once the layout is set, speed comes from your hands. NinjaTrader supports customizable hotkeys across a wide range of platform actions, and mapping even a handful — the windows and actions you reach for constantly — removes dozens of mouse trips per session. Our complete hotkeys and shortcuts guide covers what’s mappable and which bindings actually earn their keep.

Trading from the chart: the next step

Everything above is about reading the market. The natural next step is acting on it without leaving the chart — placing, moving, and closing orders directly on the price action instead of tabbing over to a separate order window.

That’s Chart Trader territory. NinjaTrader’s built-in Chart Trader puts basic order controls on your chart — our Chart Trader walkthrough shows exactly how it works — and when you’re ready for one-click entries, automatic stop management, and faster order handling, that’s exactly what our Enhanced Chart Trader was built for.

Keep building from here:

Frequently Asked Questions

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NinjaTrader® is a registered trademark of NinjaTrader Group, LLC. Affordable Indicators, Inc. builds add-ons for the NinjaTrader platform as part of the NinjaTrader Ecosystem and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NinjaTrader Group, LLC.