Is it possible using Matlab to draw a trading graph with deals?

Question

In my trading software I write myself logs like this:

634782126998342815 q 0.0156327559515302
634782126998966816 q 0.0156323845819952
634782126999122816 q 0.0156323423136646
634782126999278816 q 0.0156323634478013
634782126999434817 q 0.0156321895228581
634782126999434817 q 0.015632316326057
634782126999434817 q 0.0156320680833289
634782126999434817 q 0.0156319412841572
634782126999434817 q 0.0156320680833289
634782126999434817 q 0.0156321541605791
634782126999902817 b 0.0156321229489328
634782126999902817 q 0.0156319988296541
634782126999902817 q 0.0156318739862979
634782126999902817 q 0.0156319488920723

• First column is time (it's so big because this is number of ticks elapsed from 1970 where one tick = 100 nanoseconds, just don't worry about that)
• Second column is operation. Either q for quote b for buy and s for sell.
• Third column is price.

Lines with the same time should form a vertical candle. Also I need to add annotations on the graph to show where I buy and sell stocks.

Without annotations I think this task is trivial for Matlab, but can I add annotations in Matlab? i.e. I want to have something like this:

^{(Click image to enlarge)}

When I buy stock I want to display a green arrow and when I sell stock I want to display a red arrow. It's OK to use other symbols until they are clear and distinguishable.

Answer 1

It is possible to do so. The following code creates a circle (o) at data position 5. Additionally it adds a tooltip. (source: http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/controlling-plot-data-tips/ )

xdata=1:1:100;
ydata=rand(100,1);
% First plot the data
hLine = plot(xdata, ydata);

% First get the figure's data-cursor mode, activate it, and set some of its properties
cursorMode = datacursormode(gcf);
set(cursorMode, 'enable','on');

% Note: the following code was adapted from %matlabroot%\toolbox\matlab\graphics\datacursormode.m
% Create a new data tip
hTarget = handle(hLine);
hDatatip = cursorMode.createDatatip(hTarget);

% Update the datatip marker appearance
set(hDatatip, 'MarkerSize',5, 'MarkerFaceColor','none', ...
          'MarkerEdgeColor','k', 'Marker','o', 'HitTest','off');

% Move the datatip to the right-most data vertex point
position = [xdata(5),ydata(5),1; xdata(end),ydata(end),-1];
update(hDatatip, position);

Secondly my own idea, which a little bit easier:

figure
xdata=1:1:100;
ydata=rand(100,1);
sells = [10,15,25]
buys = [5 12 20]

plot(xdata,ydata)
hold on
for i=buys
    i
    plot(xdata(i),ydata(i),'go','MarkerSize',6,'LineWidth',3);
end

for i=sells
    plot(xdata(i),ydata(i),'ro','MarkerSize',6,'LineWidth',3);
end