Brace

The Brace groups a span. Where a rectangle drawn around the same bars reads as a price zone — something with its own boundaries that price might respect — a brace reads purely as annotation. It makes a statement about which bars belong together and nothing about what the region means. That is a narrower claim, and often the accurate one.

Three clicks place it: the two ends of the span, then a point whose perpendicular distance from the span sets the depth. Because that distance is signed, the same gesture puts the brace above or below the bars without a separate setting — click above the span and it arches over, click below and it arches under.

The shape is built as two mirrored cubic curves meeting at a central tip, which is what gives a brace its characteristic flat hooks at the ends and a point in the middle. It is a single open stroke, so there is no fill option: a brace encloses nothing, and filling one would shade the chord rather than the region.

1. 1
   Select the Brace tool

   Choose Brace from the Shapes group in the drawing toolbar.
2. 2
   Click the start of the span

   Place the first point at one end of the run of bars you want to group.
3. 3
   Click the end of the span

   Place the second point at the other end. The brace previews at a default depth.
4. 4
   Click to set the depth

   Move away from the span and click. Above the span arches the brace over the bars; below arches it under.
5. 5
   Label it

   Place a Text or Anchored Text annotation at the brace tip to name what the group is.

• Grouping a phase — mark an entire accumulation range, distribution phase or consolidation as one thing. A rectangle can enclose the same bars but reads as a zone in its own right; a brace stays clearly subordinate, which is what you want when the point is the grouping rather than the area.
• Labelling a pattern's parts — brace the pole of a flag separately from the flag, or each leg of a three-drive pattern, so a reader can see how the structure decomposes.
• Comparing spans — two braces of the same depth over two periods invite a direct comparison of their duration in a way two rectangles do not.
• Measured-move construction — brace the first leg, then brace the projected second leg beneath it, so the claim being made is explicit.
• Session or event windows — group the bars belonging to one session, or the bars around an announcement, without shading the region and obscuring it.
• Teaching and review — braces read as annotation rather than as analysis, which makes them the natural choice for explaining a chart to someone else.

• 1.The Visual Display of Quantitative Information — Edward R. Tufte
• 2.Technical Analysis of Financial Markets — John J. Murphy