Chart Time Frame

A chart's time frame is the length of the period each bar summarises — a minute, an hour, a day. Choosing it decides how much of the market's movement is aggregated into one bar and how much stays visible as separate bars. Nothing about the market changes when the setting changes: the same prices are simply grouped differently, and a study computed over a fixed number of bars therefore covers a completely different span of real time on each setting. The boundaries are set by a clock, not by events. A bar closes when its period ends whether or not anything of consequence has happened, so a large move that begins near the end of a period is split across two bars while an identical move a few minutes earlier fits inside one. Which clock is used matters as well: daily bars begin when the platform's server day begins, so the same market can produce a different set of daily bars on two platforms whose server time zones differ. Neither set is wrong, and the platform's own documentation is what settles which one is on screen.