Reader Eric writes in:

Hello Sir,

Just signed up for your service this weekend. 

I am enjoying the ability to look at your previous recommendations.  I pull the charts up in TC2000 and put your trendlines in (and a few of my own) and save them in a WatchList.  I also enter various data in Excel to see if this old fart can learn something. 

I’ve created a few scans from the Excel data and I’m wondering when you are going through your personalized scans, what chart “Zoom” do you usually have as your default?

Eric, this sounds like an esoteric question, but it’s actually a really good one.  The reason: looking at charts in the same exact “zoom” and setting is one of the keys to making consistent trading decisions.  It’s a little-discussed topic, but you can vary how good or bad a chart looks simply by changing how your charting software looks at it.  Changing form log to arithmentic scale, for example, can make a so-so chart look great.  And vice versa.

For that reason, I look at all my charts in “zoom 4” and “log” setting (a log setting means the distance between each of the numbers on the vertical grid is the same percentage.  An arithmetic setting means the distance is the same number.)