Technical analysis charts are essential tools for traders looking to understand market trends and make informed decisions. For cryptocurrency pairs like SUI and Tether (USDT), these charts visualize price action, volume, and various technical indicators over time.
When you first open a technical chart for the SUI/USDT pair, it typically displays six months of daily price data. Each bar or candlestick represents a single trading day, showing the open, high, low, and close (OHLC) prices. Hovering your mouse over any point on the chart reveals a detailed data box with this information for that specific period.
Below the main price chart, you'll find vertical bars representing trading volume. These are color-coded to provide a quick visual cue about market activity for each day:
- Green bars indicate an "up day," where the closing price was higher than the previous day's close.
- Red bars signify a "down day," where the closing price was lower.
- Blue bars appear when the price remains unchanged from the previous day.
For futures trading, a horizontal purple line above the volume bars often represents open interest, which is the total number of outstanding derivative contracts.
Customizing Your Chart View
The form below the chart is your control center. Here, you can change the symbol, chart style, time frame, and other critical settings. If you have a saved account, you can also load previously saved chart templates to apply your preferred settings instantly.
Selecting the Right Bar Type and Time Frame
You can customize how price data is presented:
- Bar Type: Choose from OHLC bars, candlesticks, hollow candlesticks, line charts, or area charts.
- Volume: Toggle volume bars on or off.
- Time Frame: This is crucial for your analysis. You select the data frequency (Intraday, Daily, Weekly, Monthly) and the period you want to analyze.
For commodity and futures contracts, you have three specific frequency options:
- Contract: Plots prices for a single, specific futures contract.
- Nearby Futures: Automatically uses the contract that was the nearest to expiration on the date of each bar.
- Continuation Chart: Always uses the contract from a specific month (e.g., always December) to construct each bar, creating a continuous price series.
The default time period adjusts based on your frequency setting. An intraday chart might default to 3 days of data, while a daily chart shows 6 months. You can manually adjust this to zoom in on recent action or zoom out for a long-term perspective. You can also define a custom historical range by entering specific start and end dates.
Advanced Display Settings
Fine-tune your chart's appearance and functionality:
- Price Box: Enable this to see a data view window that pops up as you hover, displaying OHLC values and all indicator readings for that bar.
- Price Scale & % Change Scale: Choose to see the absolute price or the percentage change from the open on the right-hand scale.
- Linear vs. Logarithmic Scale: Linear scaling is standard. Logarithmic scaling is better for visualizing percentage changes over long periods, especially with large price movements.
Creating Powerful Spread and Comparison Charts
Beyond basic price charts, advanced tools allow for deeper market analysis.
Analyzing Relationships with Spread Charts
Spread charts let you visualize the price difference between two or more assets. You can choose from common pre-set commodity spreads or create your own custom calculation for any symbols, including cryptocurrencies, stocks, or indices.
The chart is built using an expression you define. You can use operators like +, -, *, and /, and control the order of operations with parentheses. For example:
SUI-USDTwould plot the simple difference between them.2*SUI+USDTwould plot twice the value of SUI plus the value of USDT.
A key note for futures: use the * symbol as a shortcut for contract months (e.g., ZC*1 for the front-month contract). Always use parentheses to group calculations clearly.
Gauging Performance with Comparison Charts
This feature allows you to overlay the price data of up to three other symbols (like BTC or ETH) on your main SUI/USDT chart. This is ideal for comparing performance. Checking the "Percent Change" box will normalize all prices to a percentage scale, making it easier to see which asset is outperforming the others, regardless of its absolute price.
Applying Technical Studies and Indicators
The "Studies" or "Parameters" section is where you add technical indicators to your chart, such as Moving Averages, RSI, MACD, or Bollinger Bands. Each indicator can be added, and you can click on its name to adjust its parameters (e.g., the period for a moving average).
There are usually limits to how many studies you can add simultaneously:
- Non-registered users: ~8 studies
- Basic account holders: ~15 studies
- Premium subscribers: ~25 studies
It's important to note that all charts have a limit on how much historical data they can display at once—often around 5,000 data points. For a long-term daily chart, this might cap how many years of history you can view.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What do the different colored volume bars mean?
Green volume bars indicate a day where the price closed higher than the previous day (bullish activity). Red bars show a day where the price closed lower (bearish activity). A blue bar means the price was unchanged from the prior session.
What is the difference between a Nearby Futures chart and a Continuation chart?
A Nearby Futures chart uses the price of the contract nearest to expiration on any given historical date. A Continuation chart always uses the price from a specific contract month (e.g., December) for every bar, creating a smooth, continuous price series that is not affected by rolling contracts.
How do I create a custom spread between two cryptocurrencies?
In the Spread Chart section, you can enter a custom expression directly. For example, to chart the difference between SUI and Bitcoin, you could enter an expression like SUI-BTC. The chart will then plot the calculated value of that expression over time.
Why can't I add more than a certain number of indicators?
Charting platforms impose study limits to ensure performance and stability. Free accounts typically have the lowest limit, while paid subscription tiers offer the ability to add more simultaneous indicators for complex analysis.
What does 'Open Interest' represent on a futures chart?
The purple Open Interest line represents the total number of outstanding futures contracts that have not been settled. Rising open interest often suggests new money is flowing into the market, while falling open interest can indicate the market is liquidating.
How far back can I view historical data?
While you can often select any start date, the actual amount of data displayed is limited by a cap on the total number of data points (e.g., 5,000 bars). On a daily chart, this would allow you to view nearly 20 years of history. On a 5-minute intraday chart, you would be able to see a much shorter period.