Lineshotkey CThree clicks — two for the base line, one for the width

Two parallel lines around a trend — the base you draw plus a parallel at the offset you choose, with a dashed midline between them.

A parallel channel: the trend line you draw through two points, plus a second line parallel to it through your third click. Markets that trend often oscillate inside a channel — rallies to the top rail, pullbacks to the bottom one — and the channel makes that rhythm explicit.

Arm it (C). First two clicks define the base line — through the lows in an uptrend. The third click sets where the parallel sits — on the highs. Both rails extend to the right edge, with a dashed midline between them.

Universal mechanics: every tool is single-shot (it disarms after each drawing — the pin beside ✏ Draw re-arms it in one click), Esc cancels mid-drawing, clicking a finished drawing selects it for the ✕ Remove chip, and drawings persist per symbol, anchored to their candles.

Inside a healthy channel, the rails are the market's recent definition of cheap and expensive. Price hugging one rail without reaching the other warns the rhythm is changing; a close outside the channel is the trend accelerating (out the top of a rising channel) or failing (out the bottom).

The midline is the quiet workhorse: in strong trends price holds the upper half, and losing the midline is often the earliest polite warning.

A rising channel gives a premium seller two reference prices at once: the lower rail describes where dip-buyers have been operating (context for put strikes), the upper rail where rallies have been fading (context for covered-call strikes). A strike outside the channel is a bet the established rhythm breaks; inside it, a bet the rhythm holds.

Like everything in this guide, these are descriptions of conditions and reference levels — context for your own decisions, not instructions to trade.