Can anyone please help me explain those new faction market history features - candles and Supply & Demand. Sample pictures are below.

What is the difference between Pink and Blue bars in Candles?  The bars have a fat section and a skinny section - what are each of these sections of bars showing?  Or those Buy Orders placed?  Sell Orders placed?  Or consummated trades?  The squished chart at the bottom of Candles ... this looks like a reiteration of the top chart only compressed.  Is that correct?  If so, how does it used differently than the top chart?

Supply/Demand - is this posted trade orders?  Or is this consummated trades?  Same query re: squished chart at bottom.

I am less sure about the supply and demand graph, but I think the green bar represents sell orders and the red bar represents buy orders; if there were both buy and sell orders on the same day, then both bars would appear; the purple line represents the difference between the quantity placed for sale and the quantity ordered to buy ... possibly.  However, in this case it seems like the graph is upside down since more buy orders should mean more demand which should result in a climbing graph.

I think the skinny section at the bottom is intended to be a longer-term graph, but there aren't long-term data yet.  Just a guess.

And the "price" data - posted offers?  Or completed trades?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlestick_chart" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlestick_chart

Supply and Demand:  I couldn't find a great source on this one.  I'm pretty sure that when you click on buy (you are buying from an existing sell offer) the volume of the transaction shows up in red.  When you click on sell (you are selling to an existing buy offer) the volume of the transaction shows up in green.  Thus, with a glance you can see if people are buying from the sellers side of the ledger or selling to the buyers side of the ledger.  It's not possible to look at the average price and know that because you can't determine what sort of transactions were posted and accepted while you were not looking.  This let's you figure out where the demand is.  Are there buyers lurking for when the price is low enough or are there sellers lurking for when the price is high enough?

I don't think the candle chart is very helpful for very low volume markets.  I don't think either chart is helpful when people make buy/sell decisions based on non-market factors like who is in what alliance.  I take both with a bit of skepticism.

The skinny section at the bottom let's you zoom in on a time frame (horizontal axis) in the top graph.  Click and drag horizontally on the "skinny graph", try it, it works.  The problem IMO is that the vertical scale on the top graph doesn't change to the zoomed section.  That makes it difficult to determine price even if you zoom in on the relevant dates.

The trade v1 history was far clearer for my purposes.   And creating orders at hub A visible from town B based on prices at hub C only visible from town D is a major pain.  If trader costs are per account, why is their management including visibility per town?  After all I can switch from B to D and back dozens of times, but unlike switching sov level 2 structures there's no fun factor in this click fest.      

Price history seems to be calculated by region, as shown on the charts starting this thread that are marked "Market Day Start/End for Middle Kingdom".  I don't think any market history data is presented by hub.

From my "trader town", I can see price history in any region where I have a trader in any hub in that region or the region where the trader's home town is.  When I'm looking at the market history I just have to switch to a Location (from the dropdown in the upper right) in the other region that I wish to see market history for.  No history data seems to be compiled globally anymore.

If you are creating orders in Wolgast based on prices you see from a town in Arran I'm not sure why you're doing that.  You might be trying to sell something in Wolgast based on a purchase price in Arran but that's a matter of tracking your own transactions and I think that screen (Transaction Log) sucks for that purpose.  That screen seems to be there to track transactions in a database which is not exactly the same as sales transactions.  It might be difficult to check prices in two different regions when you don't maintain traders in both regions because it's sort of an awkward thing to be doing (that's what the ABCD example breaks down into).  Are you actually doing that or was that just a convoluted example to demonstrate how difficult it would be?

Trader maintenance costs are not per account, they are charged to the town that created the trader.  There is also the need for a Guild in the specific town that created the trader.  If you want to post buy and sell offers you need a Trade Office in the specific town that created the trader.  Trader build costs are per player (or account) but just because some costs are per player doesn't mean all trader maintenance isn't tied to a specific city.  So I don't know if that really answers the question of why trader management (including visibility) is tied to a town but there is some consistency with that idea.