Monthly chart: how to open and read the 1M timeframe in SuperCharting
A monthly chart (month chart) shows one candle per calendar month. See what 1M and 3M show, how many bars to expect and how to open them in SuperCharting.
A monthly chart, sometimes called a month chart, draws one candle for each calendar month: the open is the first trade of the month, the close is the last, and the wick marks the month's highest and lowest prices. In SuperCharting you switch to it with the interval button, choosing 1 month (shown as 1M). It is the right view for long-term trend, multi-year support and resistance, and for judging whether a daily setup fits the bigger picture.
What the 1M timeframe shows
Twelve candles make a year, so a monthly chart compresses a decade into 120 bars. That removes day-to-day noise and shows the structure that large investors work with: multi-year ranges, long uptrends, deep corrections.
Some things to know before reading one:
- The latest candle is unfinished. Until the month ends, the current candle's close is just the latest price. A level that looks broken on the 10th can be recovered by the 28th. Many traders wait for a monthly close before treating a break as real.
- Wicks matter. A long upper wick on a monthly candle means price rose far during the month and was pushed back by month end, a sign of selling at that level over a long period.
- Signals are slow. A monthly moving-average cross can take years to show up, and a monthly stop is often far from the entry. That suits investing and long positions, not short-term trading.
- Indicator lengths mean months. RSI 14 on 1M covers 14 months, and a 200-bar moving average needs 200 months, almost 17 years of data. If the symbol's history is shorter, that line will not plot.
How many years of bars you get
SuperCharting keeps up to 40,000 bars on a chart, far more than any market has monthly candles, so the limit you meet is how much history the symbol's data feed has. Monthly candles are built from the feed's own daily or monthly history, depending on the source, and older bars load as you scroll left until the feed has nothing older. A long-listed index such as NSE:NIFTY or BSE:SENSEX gives you a much longer monthly record than a stock listed a few years ago, and a continuous future such as NSE:NIFTY1! only covers its current contract. For long monthly studies, chart the index, not the future. The NSE charts guide lists the symbols.
Public data feeds hand out a limited number of the newest bars per request, but at 12 bars a year that is still decades of months. If a monthly chart looks short, check the Data type menu in the chart header to see which feed is serving it.
1M, 3M, 6M and 12M
The interval menu lists these under Days:
| Menu entry | Id | One bar covers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 month | 1M | A calendar month |
| 3 months | 3M | A calendar quarter: January to March, April to June and so on |
| 6 months | 6M | A calendar half-year |
| 12 months | 12M | A calendar year |
The multi-month bars are built from the monthly bars and follow the calendar. For Indian traders one detail matters: 12M is the calendar year (January to December), not the financial year (April to March). The quarter boundaries are the same as the financial-year quarters, only labelled differently. Weekly sits between daily and monthly; the custom timeframes guide covers the other intervals and how to add your own.
How to switch to a monthly chart in SuperCharting
There are three ways.
- From the menu. Click the interval button next to the symbol and choose 1 month (or 3 months) under Days.
- By typing. Click the chart, press a number key such as
1to open the Change interval box, then typeMso it reads1M, and press Enter. For three months type3M. Note that in this box a bare number means minutes and the letter M means months, so3Mis a quarterly chart, not a 3-minute chart. - With the All button. The date-range buttons in the bottom bar change the interval too. All switches the chart to 1M and zooms out to show the whole loaded history.
The bottom bar's 1M button is a different thing: it is a date range. It zooms the chart to about the last month using 30-minute candles. It does not open a monthly chart. To get monthly candles, use the interval button or the All button.
Once the chart is on 1M, add a trend tool such as the 12-month and 24-month averages from moving averages, and switch the chart type to a line or an area if candles are too busy on a very long history; see chart types.
A worked example
Open NSE:NIFTY on 1M. Say the chart shows that price spent several years between two levels, say 17,000 and 20,000 (made-up numbers), then closed a month above 20,000 and has not returned below it. A trader reading this would mark 20,000 with a horizontal ray as former resistance, now possible support. On the daily chart, a pullback toward 20,000 is then more interesting than a pullback to an arbitrary price. Next, the trader opens a 12-month moving average and notes that price has stayed above it since the breakout. If the index later closes a month below both 20,000 and the average, the long-term picture has changed. The monthly chart did not predict anything; it showed where the market's biggest levels sit.
Past behaviour of a level does not guarantee future results.
Using monthly charts with other tools
- Top-down analysis. Open a layout of three charts (1M, 1W, 1D) with Symbol and Crosshair synced; see multi-chart layouts.
- Seasonality. The seasonality chart tab builds its monthly table from daily candles whatever your chart's interval is, while the built-in Seasonality indicator reads monthly candles of the chart's own symbol.
- Strategies. A monthly strategy produces very few trades. The strategy tester needs a decent number of trades for its statistics to mean anything, so use weekly or daily for testing and monthly for context.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a monthly chart and a month chart?
Nothing. Both mean a chart where each candle covers one calendar month. SuperCharting names the interval 1 month, shown as 1M.
How many candles does a 1M chart load?
As many as the symbol's feed has, up to the 40,000-bar limit. In practice that is the whole listed life of most instruments.
Why does my 1M button show a 30-minute chart?
The bottom bar's 1M is a date range for the last month, not an interval. Use the interval button and choose 1 month.
Is the monthly chart free?
SuperCharting is currently free to use, and every interval is included.