Forex heatmap and currency strength

A forex heatmap

One pair, such as EUR/USD, tells you about two currencies at once. A heatmap puts many pairs in view. Green and red, or whatever scale you use, show the window you selected. You can size tiles equally when every pair deserves the same space, which is often what you want in forex, because pairs do not have a market cap the way shares and coins do.

TickHeat does not lock you to one grid. You choose majors, crosses, or a shorter list. The same list can be a heatmap, bubbles, cards, a list or a matrix.

Reading currency strength

A currency strength meter ranks currencies against each other. EUR/USD can rise because the euro is bid, because the dollar is offered, or both. Strength is the attempt to separate those stories by looking across pairs, not at a single quote.

You can read a plain version of that from a board. If the euro pairs are mostly one colour and the yen pairs are mostly the other, the euro and the yen are not telling the same story on that window. The usual set is the dollar, euro, yen, pound, Swiss franc, and the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars. Include the crosses among them if you want the picture to be less dependent on the dollar.

The rank is only as good as the pairs and the window behind it. It describes the recent move. It does not say what happens next. How to read a currency strength meter walks through the idea without quoting prices.

Sessions

Forex liquidity is not even through the day. TickHeat includes a session clock for Sydney, Tokyo, Frankfurt, London and New York, with overlaps and countdowns. The hours are fixed in UTC and do not yet move for daylight saving, so treat them as a guide. The busiest overlap people watch is London with New York.

Correlation is on Free, if you want to see which pairs on the board have been moving together. The session clock can also be embedded.