You can combine technical indicators in SlopeCharts with whatever settings you like and bundle them into a group known as a Study Set. By making use of Study Sets, you can create sophisticated libraries of technical indicators with any customized values you want and, if you choose, share them with other traders on the site.
Instead of having to hand-pick studies one by one, modifying the indicators at each step of the way, you can instantly use all of your carefully-tuned groupings by just one click of a button. Once you build it and save it, the study set is at your fingertips.
There are a couple of quick ways to access study sets. One, you can access any of them via the Technical Studies item on the Studies menu, or two, you can choose any of them from the Data Panel on the left side of the SlopeCharts screen.
When you first start using the program, however, you will not have any study sets of your own, so you need to construct them first (or copy the sets from other users who have decided to share their own work). You can click here for detailed information about how to add technical indicators, which is the prerequisite for preserving them as a study set.
At the top of the Technical Studies dialog box, there are three tabs. The first, Studies, is where you compose the studies and their values. You can have as few as one study or as many as you like. Next, Study Sets shows your personal library of sets that you have composed. Finally, Published Study Sets shows which sets are available among all the users on the Slope of Hope. You can copy any of these into your own library for your own use.
At first, the Study Sets tab will be blank, since you have not created any of your own. However, once you begin building some sets, they will be presented in a sortable list similar to what is shown below. Each set will have a name, a description, and a trio of action buttons for sharing, loading, and deleting the set. The most commonly-used of these buttons will be Load, since that will replace the contains of the Studies tab with whatever “recipe” you have created with the study set you have loaded.
As you probably know, normally when you have technical studies “active”, they apply to every single symbol you examine. That’s the way it is on any website or any charting program. You choose the studies, and then you start going through your symbols, all of which will be enhanced by the studies.
There are some instances, though, when you don’t want that. perhaps there is one particular set of studies which you always want to see just for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and nothing else. Using this new feature, you can “attach” that specific study set specifically to the $INDU (or whatever the symbol might be) so that it reliably appears for that symbol and no other. In other words, you won’t have the nuisance (or have to remember) to apply that specific study when you look at that particular symbol.
To use this feature, just right-click on the chart of the symbol you want to “attach’ to a study set, and select Attach Study Set. Specifically, choose the study set you’d like to associate with this particular symbol.
As always, you can hit Ctrl-S to toggle studies on or off (in case you want to temporary hide the study when looking at the symbol in question). If you want to eliminate the attachment altogether, just right-click the chart again while looking at that specific symbol and choose Detach Study Set.
If you decide to share a study set with everyone else, a dialog box will appear with a simple description based on the contents of the set. It is recommended that you replace this default with something more useful, perhaps explaining to other Slopers why the set is useful, what it does, or what it is particularly good at. The description need not be long, but it should briefly explain what good the study set might be to others.
After you have published a study set, it will be immediately available to everyone else (the button for that set will change to Unshare if you decide later to cease sharing it). If you click the Published Study Sets tab, you will see a different sortable list, this one with each set name, who created it, and what description they provided.
Each shared set has two buttons: Preview and Copy. The Copy button simply copies the contents of that set into your own library so you can use it immediately. You can also modify the set without harming the original set.
Lastly, the Preview button is extremely useful, because it gives you a very brief glimpse into what that study set looks like on your current chart. This will help you see if it is a study set you would actually like to copy or not.
Please make a point of sharing any study sets you think others might find useful. Slope is a cooperative community, and it’s always a good idea to contribute to the collective library so all Slopers can benefit from the group’s insights and ideas.
