Chart Data

Where chart data comes from

TradeScope's candlestick charts are built from NinjaTrader's own downloaded historical minute data, already on your machine. There's no separate market-data subscription, no extra login, and TradeScope never modifies NinjaTrader's files — it reads them, then keeps its own copy in a local cache.

That cache matters: once TradeScope has read a day's bars, they keep charting forever — even if your data provider later purges that history or you clean up NinjaTrader's database.

Why a chart can be empty

Two reasons, and both are fixable:

• ▸You never charted that contract in NinjaTrader. No chart opened = no minute data downloaded = nothing for TradeScope to read.
• ▸The trade was on an expired contract. Futures roll every quarter. A trade from last December didn't happen on today's front month — it happened on the contract that was live then, and that contract no longer shows up in NinjaTrader's instrument dropdown.

Downloading data for a contract

Four steps in NinjaTrader, one-time per contract:

1. 1In NinjaTrader, open a new chart (New → Chart).
2. 2Click on the chart and just start typing the contract name — for example MNQ 09-24 — then press Enter. This is the step that trips everyone up: the instrument dropdown only lists current contract months, but typing directly on the chart finds expired contracts too.
3. 3In the Data Series window, set the type to Minute, value 1, and set “Days to load” far enough back to cover the dates you need. NinjaTrader downloads the history automatically when the chart opens.
4. 4Back in TradeScope, open the chart again (or hit Refresh in the coverage table). The bars appear immediately.

See everything you're missing at once

Instead of discovering empty charts one trade at a time, open Settings → Diagnostics → Chart data coverage. TradeScope scans every day you traded, works out which contract each day needs, and shows a table of exactly what's missing:

• ▸Open this in NT — the exact contract name to type on a NinjaTrader chart.
• ▸Chartable / Missing — how many of your trading days on that contract already have bars vs. still need them.
• ▸Days to load should reach — the date range your download needs to cover, so you can set “Days to load” correctly the first time.

Download a contract, hit Refresh, and watch its row clear. When the table is empty, every trade you've ever taken is chartable.

When a day won't fill in

Occasionally NinjaTrader's incremental download skips a range — you downloaded the contract, most days cleared, but a few stay listed as missing. Two fixes, in order:

• ▸Right-click the NinjaTrader chart → Reload All Historical Data. This forces a full re-download for the chart's range and usually clears stuck days.
• ▸Control Center → Tools → Historical Data → Download, requesting the exact missing date range for the contract.

If a day still won't fill after both, your data provider no longer carries it — that history is gone at the source, and no setting will recover it.