I made a FRED graph showing one blue line. I drew a red box around the 1948-1978 period using four user-defined lines. Got the "page short URL" link. Clicked the link.
The red box was messed up. The horizontals start okay (at 1948) but continue out to end-of-data (2016?). The verticals also start okay (one at 1948 and one at 1978) but both end at end-of-data. (For each of my verticals, the end-year should be the same as the start-year.)
I made one change: I selected 1980 as the end date to display on the graph. Basically, I made the graph system conscious of an end-date. Then I corrected the user-defined data for the red box.
I got a new page short URL for the revised graph. This time when I clicked the link, the red box was okay.
It looks to me that there is some date-initialization that is not being done by the graph system code, or that is done at the wrong time.
messed up graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=fggi#0
corrected graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=fggA#0