THE NEED FOR SPEED

Hello Fellow ChartWatchers!

Are you feeling more bullish now?  Last week's rallies have put some needed energy back into the traders that haven't gone on vacation this summer.  Technically the market is mixed and you can see evidence of that in the articles below - John Murphy talks about a positive development on the daily charts while Arthur Hill points out a negative sign on the latest monthly charts.  Clearly the markets have a ways to go before anyone can say a bull market has returned, but last week's trading was the first bullish action in a long time.

THE NEED FOR SPEED

Here at StockCharts, we are constantly looking for ways to get you our charts as quickly and consistently as possible.  Much of the past two months has been spent adding and testing two different "web acceleration" technologies to our site in an effort to reduce the time it take for our charts to move across the Internet.

The first technology we tried came from a company called Akamai.  While this technology works well for other websites and, at first, showed some promising results for us, when we dug deeper we discovered that it really wouldn't work well for us mainly because when the market is open our charts cannot be cached (i.e., saved for later reuse).

The second technology looks much more promising however.  It is called "XIP" and it comes from InterNAP, the same company that currently connects us to the Internet.  XIP dynamically adjusts the low-level settings that control how data flows across the Internet.  It works best when transmitting large items (such as a chart) across long distances.  The bigger the object and/or the longer the distance, the more XIP helps.

(Another really nice thing about XIP is that it doesn't require any changes to your computer - it's a change that we make here in our datacenter.  No install, no settings to mess with, just improved speed - pretty nice!)

At this point we've completed our internal testing of XIP and the results look good.  In our tests, XIP reduced the time it takes to send out our charts by 30 to 40% in most cases.  That said, we now need your help.  We want to make sure that if we switch to XIP it won't cause any problems for our users.

If you have a spare second this morning, please click on the following link and see if you have trouble seeing any of the charts on the page.  If any of the charts don't appear, please let us know.  If any of the charts take a really long time to appear, please let us know.  (If some of the charts appear 30 or 40% faster than they did before, please let us know too!)

Here's the link:  http://stockcharts.com/charts/gallery.html?VMW

Some of the charts on that page use the "old, standard" technology and at least one of them uses the new XIP technology.  See if you can see which is which just by refreshing the page.  Click here to send us your comments and thanks for helping us test this technology.

- Chip 

Comments

[Steve Berry]

All the charts appeared to load faster, and during the page refresh.

I could not tell which chart (s) uses the XIP technology.

[Jim Thompson]

The pages refreshes too quickly for me to discern any differences between charts. All display within one second or so. It all seems very snappy.

[David DeFina]

All the charts loaded very fast so couldn't distinguish which was the slow chart. All the charts are visible on this end.

[Richard Topping]

I could not tell any difference in performance between any of the four charts when loaded individually. My setup is pretty fast, Intel duo processor on fast Charter cable connection. I very, very seldom notice slow performance at Stockcharts.com. I hope no help in my case is good help for you.
Thanks for your efforts -- Rick Topping

[Richard Topping]

After looking closely at the refresh rate of the 4 charts(twice), my my perception is the Point and Figure chart is the old process. The first 3 charts refresh faster than an eye blink for me. The last chart, P&F, seemed to refresh at half the rate or less in relation to charts 1 through 3.
Rick Topping.

[Ron Davis]

I just tried the new down load of charts. Every thing worked extremely well. Faster than I expected. The refresh rate was unbelieveablely fast.
Thank you for the wonderful up-grade.

[John Holland]

Nice looking charts! VMM daily was first, followed by VMM weekly, then the Point
and Firgure chart. Clicking the Refresh button, Point and Firgure was thr slowest of
the Three. Also, the Sears and Price Grabber adds popped up after VMM Daily.
Thanks for showing me the new technologhy. John.

[Charles Chesley]

The weekly chasrt seems slower to refresh. The point and figure chart is really fast. They all refreshed well.

[Daniel S. Genegabuas]

Refresh several times and fine the weekly review is the fastest

[Eric Keezer]

My Dad has a slow connection at 768 kbps. and I've noticed in the past that his charts load slower (3-5 seconds) than mine (0.5 seconds). Maybe these tweaks will better help people with slower connections. My Dad trades MUCH more than I do—this could be valuable to his Stockcharts.com experience.

[Bob Lentz]

Weekly is faster on "Refresh."

[Robert Giordano]

Hi Chip

All of the charts came-up noticeably faster on my computer with the XIP technology. Couldn't tell any difference, but if there is one that's the old process it might be the P&F chart. The XIP would be a teriffic upgrade for me. Thanks.
RMG

[Rand Cooley]

These were some of the fastest loading graphics I have seen I too couldn't tell which was which but the page loaded extremely fast and I didnt have any issues.So now tell the IBD to abandon their archaic active x controls and join the 21st century.Nice work.

[Viraf Karai]

The charts loaded very quickly. I'm reading your post on my ipad on my home wireless network. Great job - it appears to be impressive technology.

[Larry Pinkel]

All very fast; received in this order: Weekly, P&F, Daily, Intraday

[MSP]

I have just tried to see if charts pops up faster.
Weekly chart pops up fatest among three. This test is done in the remote site, Korea.
I hope this test helps you in assessing the system.
Always thanks to Stockcharts for free chart access. :)

[Ed Nielsen]

WOW what just happened? I am on a Hughes satellite connection out in the rural countryside and responce time on charts is at least 5 seconds on a good day. All these charts appeared immediatly, same with refresh. How is that possible? Chip, you are a magician.

[Benjamin Womer]

I did see all charts. I couldn't see the weekly and point and figure charts refreshing, not sure if it was because they were so fast that they didn't appear to change or what. The Intreday and Daily charts refresh rates were fast.

[Jan]

Weekly is faster than other 2, noticeable delay between weekly displaying and other 2 . Other 2 both same time after the weekly, so I'd guess the Weekly

[Jan]

adding to above comment: I refreshed while dispalying bottom part of one chart and top part of another chart, so I could do a timing comparison. Weekly chart(middle) consistently refreshed the count of 1-2 before the top and bottom ones. I'm in Australia if that makes any difference.
Tried 2 times with each lot of charts, same result of a noticelable time dealy between weekly chart dispalying first and then the others..

[Frank McDowell]

The Weekly and Point & Figure beat the other two by a substantial amount on a dial up connection.

[Ron Easton]

Instantaneous all around, many thanks.

[Praveen Shamain (INDIA)]

Hi,

First of all thank you very much for your initiative in providing world class charts to us - investing community.

I have reloaded/refreshed these charts from INDIA and my obseration is given below, in the decending order of speed of refreshing.

1. Weekly chart of VMW
2. Point & Figure (Daily) chart of VMW
3. Daily chart of VMW

Hope it helps.

With Regards,

[Frank N. Zupan]

From Afghanistan the first two charts loaded about 1-1.5 seconds slower each time.
Thanks,
Frank

[Newton Leland Vermilion]

I performed two different tests.
1. I clicked on each chart several times to get a feel for the speed.
2. I would frame part of chart one and part of chart two, then refresh several times. Next I would frame part of chart two with part of chart three and refresh.
My opinion is that chart three is the only one with new technology based on both tests I made.