The strip, row by row
The strip sits across the top of the chart, edge to edge, and has five rows. From top to bottom:
1 · The hour ruler
A thin row with the hours marked every three. They are in New York time, because the whole bar is anchored to New York: the currency day starts and ends at 17:00 there, and New York is the reference that stays put all year.
To see what broker time something falls at, look at MetaTrader's own time axis at the bottom: that one runs on broker time. And so you do not have to do the sum, the sessions are already shaded over your candles in the right place (see Time).
Above the ruler you will see small squares: those are today's economic releases, at their time (see Economic releases).
2 · The day bar
The heart of Tempo. A whole day from left to right, divided into bands:
| Band | What it is |
|---|---|
| Tokyo | The Asian session |
| London | The European session |
| New York | The American session |
| Dead zone | The New York afternoon, with London already closed |
| Rollover | The broker's change of day |
The band of the session that is open right now is brighter than the rest and has a frame around it. The others are dimmed so they do not compete.
The bands are semi-transparent: where London and New York overlap, their two colours add up and that stretch comes out in a third colour. That is the overlap, and you see it without it being drawn separately.
A vertical line marks where you are now. It is in the theme's accent colour and crosses both the bar and the killzone line, so you can see at a glance where this moment falls in the day — even with the market closed, when no band is highlighted but the clock keeps running.
The day does not start at midnight: it starts when the rollover ends, which is when the currency day really begins. That way no session is split across both ends of the strip.
If you have switched on a custom session, it appears as a frame in its own colour over the bar, with its name (see Settings).
3 · The killzones
A thin line just under the bar, with the two stretches of highest institutional activity marked. They are not sessions: they are windows inside them, and they start before the session opens. They are explained in Sessions.
You can switch them off with InpVerKillzones.
4 · The first text row: what you came to look at
From left to right:
- The countdown — "TOKYO opens in 01:46:06" or "LONDON closes in 02:14:33", to the second.
- The next economic release — how long until it comes out, the currency and what it is. In the weeks when London and New York are not in step, the warning for those weeks shows here instead (see Time).
- The session range, on the right, if a session is open, with its gauge.
5 · The second text row: what it was worked out with
- The candle — how long until the current candle closes: "M15 candle 04:12".
- NY hh:mm — the time in New York.
- The time model — "Server GMT+3 · US DST on · EU DST on": your broker's offset, measured, and whether each side of the Atlantic is on summer time. It is what everything above was drawn with.
- The version of Tempo you are running, at the end.
When space runs out
If a row runs out of room it is not chopped off: items go in order of importance, and as soon as one does not fit, it and everything after it stay out. The order in which things drop as the chart narrows:
1. the session range (below roughly 1,000 pixels), 2. the New York clock (below 760), 3. the names inside the bands and the hour ruler (below 520).
The day bar, the countdown and the candle never drop. Below 320 pixels nothing is drawn: an unreadable smear is worse than a gap.
The legend
At the very bottom, in a box, the colour of each band with its name. It is there for the first few days; once you know the colours, switch it off with InpVerLeyenda and get the space back.
Light background
If your chart has a light background, the strip notices and draws itself with a light theme: dark text on a light ground. If you change the chart's background colour, the strip changes with it.