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Subplots in mplfinance

"Subplots" is the matplotlib term for making multiple plots on the same figure.

There are two ways to make subplots in mplfinance:

  • Panels Method
  • External Axes Method

Below is a brief description of each method, with links to tutorials on how to use each method:

The Panels Method

  • The Panels Method is easy to use and requires little or no knowledge of matplotlib, and no need to import matplotlib.
  • The Panels Method handles 95% of the most common types of financial plots and market studies.
  • The Panels Method attains its simplicity, in part, by having certain limitations.
    These limitiations are:
    • Subplots are always stacked vertically.
    • All subplots share the same x-axis.
    • There is a maximum of 32 subplots.
  • The Panels Method is adequate to plot:
    • ohlc, candlesticks, etc.
    • with volume, and
    • with one or more studies/indicators, such as:
      • MACD, DMI, RSI, Bollinger, Accumulation/Distribution Oscillator, Commodity Channel Index, Etc.
  • See here for a tutorial and details on implementing the mplfinance Panels Method for subplots.

External Axes Method

  • The External Axes method of subplots allows the user to create and manage their own Figure and Axes (SubPlots), and pass Axes into mplfinance.
  • Details on how to use this feature are described below.
      (code examples can be found in the External Axes notebook).
  • When passing Axes into mplfinance, some mplfinance features may be not available, or may behave differently. For example,
    • The user is responsible to configure the size and geometry of the Figure, and size and location of the Axes objects within the Figure.
    • The user is responsible to display the Figure by calling mplfinance.show() (or pyplot.show()).
  • Passing external Axes into mplfinance results in more complex code but it also provides all the power and flexibility of matplotlib for those who know how to and what to use it. This includes:
    • plotting on as many subplots as desired, in any geometry desired.
    • plotting multiple ohlc/candlestick plots on the same Figure or Axes.
    • plotting multiple candlestick plots side-by-side, or in any other geometry desired.
    • anitmating or updating plots in real time.
    • event handling
  • Use method mpf.figure() to create Figures.
    This method behaves exactly like pyplot.figure() except that mpf.figure() also accepts kwarg style= to set the mplfinance style.
  • Call the usual methods for creating Subplot Axes on the figure:
  • When calling the above subplot creation methods, if fig was creating using mpf.figure() then the Subplot Axes will inheret the mpfinance style information from the figure. Alternatively the user may pass in kwarg style= to set different style information for an Axes than for the Figure or other Axes.
  • Please note the following:
    • Use kwarg ax= to pass any matplotlib Axes that you want into mpf.plot()
    • If you also want to plot volume, then you must pass in an Axes instance for the volume,
        so instead of volume=True, use volume=<myVolumeAxesInstance>.
    • If you specify ax= for mpf.plot() then you must also specify ax= for all calls to make_addplot()