Stamp

The Stamp tool marks a chart's status rather than its content. A chart being sent for sign-off, or returned from it, or carrying a handling restriction, needs that status readable before any of its analysis is — and a stamp is the form that convention already exists for. One click places it.

The wording and the colour are a single choice. Approvals are green, refusals red, provisional states amber, restrictions a hard red, neutral process states grey. This is deliberate: a green REJECTED would actively mislead a reader who took the colour at face value, which on a chart authorising risk is not a cosmetic problem. Choosing a preset sets both; choosing a colour by hand switches the preset to Custom, which is the explicit way to say you know what you are doing.

A stamp sits at a slight tilt by default, and that is not decoration either. A horizontal block of spaced capitals reads as a heading — part of the chart's content. Tilted, it reads as something applied to the chart from outside, which is exactly the distinction between analysis and its status. Distressed ink pushes the same idea further where a chart is going into a document.

1. 1
   Select the Stamp tool

   Click the Stamp icon in the annotation group.
2. 2
   Click to place

   One click drops an APPROVED stamp centred at that point, at the default tilt.
3. 3
   Choose the stamp

   Pick the wording from the popup. The ink colour changes with it.
4. 4
   Sign it

   Turn on the author and date lines so the stamp records who applied it and when.
5. 5
   Adjust the presentation

   Set the frame style, size, tilt and ink opacity. Add a wash if the stamp sits over dense candles.

• Sign-off — an APPROVED stamp with name and date on a trade idea that has cleared review, so the chart itself carries the authorisation.
• Rejection with a record — REJECTED plus a reference number, so the decision and where to find its reasoning travel together.
• Handling classification — CONFIDENTIAL or INTERNAL ONLY on a chart that must not be forwarded. A screenshot taken from it carries the marking too, which a separate email disclaimer does not.
• Draft marking — DRAFT on analysis still in progress, so an early screenshot is not mistaken for a finished view.
• Discussion framing — FOR DISCUSSION on a chart taken into a meeting, setting the expectation that it is a proposal rather than a conclusion.
• Retiring an idea — VOID over a setup that no longer applies, keeping the analysis visible for review while removing any doubt that it is still live.

A stamp should be unmissable without obscuring the analysis it is stamping. Empty chart space to the right of the last bar is usually the best position: the stamp is fully legible, the price action is untouched, and a screenshot cropped to the bars still catches it. The next best is a low-activity region — a wide consolidation, or the space above a downtrend.

Where a stamp genuinely must sit over price action — a VOID over the setup being retired, for instance, where the whole point is that it lands on that analysis — drop the ink opacity to around 50% and turn on the wash. The candles stay readable through it, which keeps the stamp from destroying the evidence it is commenting on.

Size matters for classification markings specifically. CONFIDENTIAL at 12px in a corner is easy to miss, and being missed is the failure mode that matters for a handling restriction. Set those large enough to register in peripheral vision.

• 1.Document classification and handling — Industry practice
• 2.Chart annotation best practices — TradingView Help
• 3.Research distribution and review workflows — Industry practice