Pin

The Pin tool marks a point. One click and the tip of the marker sits on that price at that time — everything else, the head, the badge, the caption, is laid out away from the anchor so it never covers the bar it is pointing at. That constraint is what the tool is for: when the question is "which bar?", a pin answers it exactly.

A pin deliberately carries no body text. Its label is a badge of two or three characters on the head, plus an optional caption in a chip beside it. That limitation is the feature. A chart marked with twenty pins stays readable; the same chart with twenty notes does not, because each note demands a paragraph of space and attention. Use pins when you need many marks, and notes when you need one explanation.

Priority drives colour through a fixed ramp — info blue, low grey, medium amber, high orange, critical red. Colour and stated severity are one control rather than two on purpose: a pin whose colour disagreed with its severity would be worse than either alone, so choosing a priority sets the colour and choosing a colour by hand switches the priority to Custom. That way the chart never says "critical" in green.

1. 1
   Select the Pin tool

   Click the Pin icon in the annotation group, or press Alt+M.
2. 2
   Click the bar

   One click places the tip on that price and time and opens the caption for typing.
3. 3
   Type a caption

   A short line describing what happened there. Press Enter to finish.
4. 4
   Set the priority

   Choose Info through Critical in the popup. The colour follows automatically.
5. 5
   Add a badge

   Enter one to three characters for the head — a sequence number is the most common use.
6. 6
   Flip it if needed

   Set "Pin sits" to Below for a pin on a low, so the marker points up at the bar rather than down through it.

• Numbered walk-through — pins 1, 2, 3 along a sequence of events, so a chart explains itself in order to someone reading it later.
• Event marking — the bar an announcement landed on, the bar a level broke, the bar a position was opened. The tip is on the bar, not near it.
• Severity triage — critical pins on the things that invalidate the thesis, info pins on the merely interesting. The colour carries the reading before any text is read.
• Review markers — points a colleague should look at, with initials so a shared chart shows who flagged what.
• Execution log — fills marked on the bars they occurred on, with the price shown, giving a visual trade record.
• Dense marking — twenty pins stay readable where twenty notes would not, because a pin carries a badge rather than a paragraph.

The shapes are not interchangeable decoration. Teardrop and balloon taper to the tip themselves, which makes the anchor unambiguous and is why they are the right default for marking a specific bar. Circle, square and diamond sit on a stem — visually lighter, and better when many pins sit close together and seven teardrops would merge into a mass. Square in particular reads well with a number in it, which makes it the natural choice for a long numbered sequence.

Flag and bookmark hang to one side of their anchor rather than straddling it, which is useful when the pin would otherwise overlap a neighbouring marker. Flag also carries a longer badge comfortably because its head is wider than it is tall.

A pin, an arrow marker and an anchored note all point at something, and the difference is what they carry. An arrow marker indicates direction — it says "from here, that way", which suits a signal. A pin identifies a point — it says "this bar", which suits an event. An anchored note explains — it says "this bar, and here is why it matters in three sentences".

The practical test is how many you need. One thing to explain: use an anchored note. A directional signal: use an arrow marker. Several points to identify and possibly rank: use pins, because they are the only one of the three that stays legible in quantity.

• 1.Chart annotation best practices — TradingView Help
• 2.The Visual Display of Quantitative Information — Edward R. Tufte
• 3.Technical Analysis of Financial Markets — John J. Murphy