Persistent chart annotations — pin your trade plan, daily bias, and discipline reminders directly on the chart. Five independent text slots, full position and font control, survive chart refreshes and session changes.
Section 01 — Overview
BWT ChartNotes adds up to five persistent text labels to configurable positions on the chart. Each note has independent control over its text content, position, color, and font — making it possible to place multiple annotations in different areas of the chart simultaneously without forcing a single style on all of them. Notes persist for the entire trading session and survive chart refreshes, ensuring your annotations remain in place throughout the day.
The most common use is pinning the daily trade plan or session bias directly on the chart, eliminating the need to refer to external notes while managing active positions. Other practical uses include marking key news release times, displaying the day's defined loss limit, recording the current session's Core Levels in text form, or flagging a specific setup the trader is waiting for. Because the notes live on the chart itself, they are visible exactly where the decisions are being made — no alt-tabbing required.
Treat ChartNotes as a discipline tool, not a decoration. The act of writing the note before the session externalizes a commitment; the act of seeing it during the session enforces that commitment when emotions try to override it. The Preview label reflects that additional note slots and formatting options are planned for future releases.
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Section 02 — Key Concepts
A summary of the building blocks that make ChartNotes a discipline tool rather than a generic text-on-chart utility. Each capability has a deliberate use in the trader's pre-market and live-session workflow.
Five completely independent text labels — each with its own text, position, color, and font. Use one slot for daily bias, another for key levels, another for risk limits, another for news times, another for personal rules. Leave any slot's text blank to hide that label.
Each note can be anchored to one of five chart positions: Top-Left, Top-Right, Bottom-Left, Bottom-Right, or Center. Position your most important reminder where your eye lands first; tuck reference data into less prominent corners. The anchor stays fixed regardless of zoom or scroll.
Each note has its own font face, font size, and text color. Use color as a hierarchy: green for bullish bias, red for bearish, gold for risk limits, cyan for reference data. Use size to signal importance — the most critical reminder slightly larger than the rest.
A core principle of trading psychology: commitments made before the session are easier to keep than commitments made during it. Writing your bias and rules onto the chart converts an internal intention into an external visible cue — much harder for the in-the-moment brain to dismiss when the stakes feel high.
Notes survive chart refreshes, instrument changes within the same template, and parameter edits. Once configured, they remain in place for the full session without needing to be re-entered. This persistence is what makes ChartNotes practical — a tool you have to recreate every morning is a tool you stop using.
Treat the five slots as a ranked priority list. Note 1 = the single most important reminder of the day (typically daily bias or risk limit), positioned where your eye naturally rests. Note 5 = lowest-priority reference data. This forced hierarchy makes you decide what actually matters before the session opens.
Because notes live on the chart itself, no separate window, sticky note, or external document is needed. The information is visible exactly where decisions are made. Eliminating the alt-tab also eliminates the brief windows of inattention where impulsive trades are most likely to be entered.
Section 03 — Daily Routine
A repeatable pre-market and intra-session sequence that turns ChartNotes from a passive text label into an active discipline tool. Run this routine every trading day and the notes start doing real work.
Section 04 — Parameters
Every slot has the same four settings: text content, screen position, color, and font. Leave a slot's text blank to hide it entirely — there's no need to disable individual slots manually.
| Parameter | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Note 1–5 Text | — | The text content to display for each annotation (leave blank to hide the slot) |
| Note 1–5 Location | — | Chart position for each note: top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right, or center |
| Note 1–5 Color | — | Text color for each individual note — use color as a hierarchy cue |
| Note 1–5 Font | — | Font face and size for each note — keep readable but not chart-dominating |
Section 05 — Use Cases
These are the most field-tested ways traders use ChartNotes. Each one assigns specific slots specific jobs — making the indicator a structured discipline tool rather than a freeform scratchpad.
A pinned bullish / bearish / neutral statement based on your higher-timeframe analysis, set before the session opens. The single most common reason traders take losing trades is "bias drift" — starting the day bullish, taking a loss on a long, and impulsively flipping bearish based on the next 15 minutes of price action. A persistent on-chart bias note makes the drift visible and explicit, which makes it harder to do silently.
A text list of the important levels you're watching today — Core Levels, Opening Range boundaries, ICT Key Price Points, prior session highs and lows. Even with all those levels drawn on the chart by other indicators, having them written out as a list creates a different cognitive surface — a checklist you can verify against rather than a visual jumble. Also useful when zoomed in beyond where some lines are visible.
A pinned reminder of the maximum loss you've defined for the day — and ideally the trade count, max position size, and any other risk caps. The whole point of having limits is that they bind in the exact moments when emotion would have you ignore them. A note in the center or top of the chart, in red, displaying "MAX LOSS: $500" stays visible during the moments where you most need to see it — when you're already down $400 and feeling the pull to "make it back."
A list of times for major economic releases or earnings reports affecting the chart. Even traders who don't trade news need to know when news hits — to step aside before it, or to widen stops in anticipation of volatility. Pairs particularly well with BWT EcoNews if you're using the full economic calendar overlay; the on-chart text serves as the at-a-glance summary.
Your top 3–5 personal trading rules pinned as a constant reminder. The rules that matter most are the ones you keep violating — "Wait for the retrace," "No trades after 11:30," "Don't add to losers," "Never short into the open." Pinning them on the chart is a small daily commitment that, over months, dramatically reduces rule-violation losses. The note is a forcing function: the rules are visible while you're considering the trade that would break them.
Section 06 — Best Practices
A consolidated set of practices for keeping ChartNotes useful long-term. The goal is to keep the indicator earning its screen real estate — never let it drift into chart clutter that you stop seeing.
A note that requires reading is a note that gets ignored mid-trade. Aim for scannable phrases: "BULLISH — above ORH" beats "I think we're bullish today because we opened above the overnight session high and the daily trend is up." If you need more context, that belongs in your journal — not on the chart.
The whole value of pre-session notes is that they were written when you were calm. Editing them mid-session — especially after a loss — defeats the purpose. The one exception: news breaking that genuinely changes the macro picture (FOMC, earnings, geopolitical event). Otherwise, the morning's note stands until end of day.
Assign colors to meaning, not aesthetics. Green = bullish bias, red = bearish bias or risk limits, gold = caution items (news), grey = informational, cyan = reference data. Once your eye learns the code, you read the chart faster — color carries information without requiring you to actually parse the words.
Eye-tracking research consistently shows readers' first focus on the upper-left of any visual surface. Use that prime position for the single most important reminder of the day — typically daily bias or the daily loss limit. Center is a strong alternative when you want the note to be unmissable. Reserve corners for reference data.
A stale note is worse than no note. Once a level is broken, an OR is invalidated, or a news event has passed, clear or update the slot. Notes that don't reflect current reality train you to ignore the indicator — and once you start ignoring it for stale data, you'll ignore it for fresh data too.
Too small and you don't read it; too large and it obscures price action. 11–14 point on a typical resolution chart is the sweet spot. Slightly larger for the most important note (bias, risk limit), slightly smaller for reference data. Test by glancing at the chart from your normal sitting distance — if any note is illegible at a glance, it's too small.
The notes earn their place on the chart by changing your behavior. If you're using them as cosmetic chart labeling — instrument names, generic motivational quotes — you've drifted from the purpose. Every note should be tied to a specific decision you make during the session: enter / don't enter, exit / hold, size up / size down, stop trading.
Set up your standard 5-note configuration — slot assignments, positions, colors, fonts — and save it as part of your chart template. Each morning, only the text content needs updating; the structure stays the same. Consistency in layout matters: the bias note in the same place every day becomes muscle memory.
ChartNotes is most powerful when used alongside the indicators that produce the levels you reference. Pair with BWT Core Levels (the levels themselves, listed in Note 2), BWT EcoNews (the calendar, summarized in Note 4), and BWT System Performance (technical health, separate from your trade plan notes). The notes reference; the indicators draw.
At week's end, look back at what your bias notes were each day vs. what actually happened. Calibration improves only by counting — were you right 4 of 5 days? 2 of 5? This single habit, repeated quarterly, is one of the highest-ROI feedback loops in trading. Your daily ChartNotes become a low-friction record of your discretionary forecasts.
Section 07 — Common Pitfalls
The failure modes are predictable and almost all behavioral. Avoiding these is, on its own, what separates traders who use ChartNotes effectively from those who set it up once and never look at it again.
Filling all five slots with paragraphs of text turns the chart into a billboard. Price action gets obscured, your eye stops registering individual notes, and the discipline value collapses. Better to use three short notes than five long ones.
"BULLISH — above ORH" is great on the day you wrote it. Three sessions later, when you forgot to update, that same note is now actively misleading. Set a rule: first action of pre-market is updating ChartNotes, period.
A 24-point note in the center of the chart competes with the candles for visual attention. The notes are supposed to be visible, not dominant. If the note draws your eye away from price action, it's too big. Shrink it until it's readable but recessed.
Five notes, all in the same default color, become a wall of text. Without a color code, your eye has to read every note every time. Assign colors with intention — bullish, bearish, risk, news, reference — and your eye learns to extract the right note instantly.
The whole point of pre-session notes is to anchor decisions when emotion runs hot. The pattern that defeats this: trader is down on the day, sees the "MAX LOSS $500" note, glances past it, takes the trade anyway. The note can't enforce discipline — only you can. The note's job is to remove the excuse of "I forgot."
"Long ES from 5862, target 5878, stop 5856" is a trade plan, not a ChartNote. Trade-specific data belongs in your journal or trade-management workflow. ChartNotes are for session-wide reminders that apply to all decisions, not individual trades.
The opposite mistake of mid-session bias drift: refusing to update bias when the market has meaningfully shifted. If a major level breaks decisively against your bias, the note needs to reflect that. Discipline is not stubbornness — it's responding to evidence, not noise.
ChartNotes only works as a daily ritual. If you set up your five slots, then never edit them again, the static text becomes part of the chart background and your eye stops registering it. The pre-market update is the entire mechanism — skip it and the indicator stops working.
BWT Precision Indicators require a valid BWT license for NinjaTrader 8. This page is provided for informational and educational purposes only and is not trading advice. Trading futures and other leveraged products involves substantial risk of loss and is not appropriate for all investors. Past performance is not indicative of future results.