Workflow
Building a watchlist you will actually use
A watchlist with 80 tickers is a to-do list you never finish. You scroll, your eyes glaze, and the one symbol that actually moved slips past. The fix isn't more names — it's fewer, and a way to read them fast.
Add the ones you mean
At the top of the watchlist panel on the right, click the + and type a ticker into the Symbol field — BTCUSD, AAPL, EURUSD, ES1! for the S&P front-month future — then hit Enter. On a chart you can also just start typing to open symbol search and click the flag icon in the results to drop it into the list. Add a symbol only if you can say why it's there. If you can't, it's clutter.
Cap it around 8 to 12. That's the number you can genuinely track — enough to cover a couple of markets, few enough that each name earns attention.
Make it readable at a glance
- Section by market: right-click, add a divider, and split into crypto, US stocks, FX. Related instruments move together, so grouping them tells a story a jumbled list can't.
- Colour-flag your radar: right-click a symbol, pick a flag colour. Red for the two or three you're watching closest — a setup forming, a level approaching.
- Sort by %change: click the Chg% column header. Biggest movers jump to the top instantly, and you see where the day's action is without opening a single chart.
Scan, don't stare
Watching all day dulls your judgement. A focused 15-minute pass after the close — sorted by %change, flags checked — tells you more than six hours of staring. Note what moved and why, set an alert on the levels that matter (see your first price alert), and close the screen. If you're tracking crypto, stocks and FX together, keeping them on one screen keeps the scan to one window.