StockCharts Blogs - Chip Anderson

Public ChartLists v2.0 Update

Last month I wrote about our plans for the new version of our Public ChartLists area.  In that article I said we were shooting to release the new system around February 1st.  Well...  Turns out I was still giddy from the eggnog when I wrote that.  It's going to be a little while longer.

The good news is that we have made some great progress towards our goal.  I wanted to share a couple of screenshots of what things will look like once all the dust settles.

Remember, we have several goals we are trying to achieve with this new version including:

• A continual reward system with many levels - not just the single "Hall of Fame" designation.
• An easy-to-use categorization system that helps users find content they want to read quickly.
• An iron-clad voting system that will eliminate voting fraud.
• A list ranking system that is based on more than just simple voting.
• A notification system that lets readers know when content they are interested in has been updated.

With those ideas in mind, here's a screenshot of the new "scoreboard" page - the page that shows all the different Public ChartLists that people can choose from:

Let me point out some features that this screenshot hints at:

• Readers can search for ChartLists based on category or key word searches.  Each list can belong to up to 3 different categories such as "Cycle Analysis", "ETFs", or "None of the Above".
• Members can choose to "follow" (i.e., subscribe to) any ChartLists that they enjoy.  A gold star appears by lists that a member is following and the member can choose to be notified whenever any of his followed lists are updated.
• Members can vote on a daily basis for the lists (up to 3) that they enjoyed reading the most.
• Non-member can read any ChartList but they cannot follow any lists nor can they vote for any lists.
• Each day, we're going to use a combination of followers, votes, visits from non-members, and random reader survey results to calculate each list's "Quality Rank."  That rank will be used to determine a list's position on this "scoreboard" page.  The exact formula for determining that rank will not be released.  Our goal is to reward authors that focus on sharing great content rather than rewarding authors that try to game the ranking system.
• Readers can choose to re-sort the list by number of followers, number of votes, categories, or latest update time.
• Authors with consistantly high Quality Ranks will earn "perks" like having an icon/avatar for their list, having decorative text in their list description, having live links to other websites, having a different color theme for their list pages, having a personalized URL for their list, and more.  The complete list of "perks" and the requirements that need to be met in order to gain and keep each perk are still being worked out.
• Authors will also be able to earn "badges" for their list that help readers decide which lists to review.  Badges will be awarded for a variety of achievements including longevity, cumulative followers, cumulative votes, and more.  (Note: Current Hall-of-Fame mebers will get a special badge to commemorate that achievement.)
• Each day, the five highest ranked ChartLists will be featured on the scoreboard page.  We are considering ways to feature new authors as well. 

Here's a sample screenshot of what a ChartList with many of the perks could look like:

Again, parts of this are still evolving and there are several options that aren't shown, but here are some of the general things to notice:

• A color theme (one of 10+ that we will have) has been choosen.
• The StockCharts header has been minimized.
• The author's web page and Twitter accounts are linked in.
• The author's personalized avatar appears.
• There is lots of (unused) space for commentary about the list at the top of the page.
• There are prominent buttons for StockCharts members to vote for the list and/or subscribe to it.
• The badges that the author has earned appear prominently.
• An optional mechanism for readers to send feedback to the author will also be available.

If you are a reader of Public ChartLists, I hope these screenshots have you excited about the improved ability to find high-quality, interesting chart commentary to read.

If you are a Public ChartList author, hopefully you are excited about the ability to improve your list, earn rewards, and over time to essentially create your own financial commentary website using our live charts.  (Just imagine "http://stockcharts.com/list/your-name-here".)

We're hard at work right now making this stuff a reality.  I'll go out on another limb and say that it will be ready by March 1st.  I might be wrong again but hey, it will keep the programmers motivated...

- Chip

StockCharts' Uptime Report for 2011 - Four Nines!

The results are in and StockCharts.com was faster and much more stable in 2011.  Did you notice?  No?  That's good!

In 2009, Pingdom reported that we were available 99.77% of the time (a total of 18 hours and 25 minutes of downtime).   In 2010, Pingdom reported that we were up 99.94% of the time (a total of 5 hours and 9 minutes down).  And in 2011, Pingdom reported we were up 99.99% of the time (0 hours and 50 minutes down).  That means we're up to four nines!  And you have to like that trend!

By the way, how does that compare to other popular web services?  Check out this post from the guys behind the "Basecamp" service.  They are crowing about "only" being down 16 minutes since mid-December.  They point out that other popular services have been down anywhere from 6 minutes to 6 hours during that same period.  StockCharts.com has been down zero minutes during that same time - even with a major snowstorm in the Seattle area at the start of January.

Some of the credit for the improvement in our uptimes has to go our decision to switch data vendors from ThomsonReuters to Interactive Data.  The Interactive Data feed has been MUCH more stable and reliable making it that much easier for the rest of the website to remain up and running.

In addition to being up most of the time last year, we continued our trend of getting faster.  The average response time for our SharpCharts workbench page decreased from 518ms in 2010 to 448ms in 2011 - a 13.5% decrease in the time it takes to get you your charts.

As I said when I reported last year's results, WE ARE STILL NOT SATISFIED WITH THESE NUMBERS.  Our goal remains 100% uptime and we will continue to work towards that goal.  There will be more bumps ahead along the way.  We appreciate your patience when bumbs happen.  But these numbers show that progress is happening.

Finally, there are two "gotchas" that come with this great news:

1.) Parts of our website are not under our direct control in terms of performance or uptime.  Specifically, the Blogs area and the Support area.  The Blogs area (controlled by a company called TypePad) was down 1 hour and 45 minutes last year (99.98%) and the Support area (controlled by a company called ZenDesk) was down 7 hours and 54 minutes (99.91%).  We are not thrilled with those numbers and may being looking for alternatives if those companies cannot improve their results in 2012.

2.) Unfortunately, posts like this - where I point out how well things have been going - usually result in something going wrong somewhere almost immediately.  Sigh.  "Murphy's Law" is hard to fight.  Hopefully, that won't happen this time.

Here's to an even better 2012.

- Chip

EUROPEAN STOCK COVERAGE WILL END ON MARCH 1st

Well...  It appears that the demand for European technical charts is lower than we expected when we lauched our European services in the middle of last year.  In December, I asked for input from Europe-based ChartWatchers about how we could improve that service and make it more attractive.  I only received 4 replies.

Don't get me wrong - I appreciated those replies tremendously, but the fact that only four people responded just confirms what we have been seeing with the very low subscription numbers for European services.  People are just not that interested in the LSE, Euronext and German markets at this time.

At the end of 2011, I stepped back and looked at the low subscriber levels we are seeing as well as the high (very high) costs of providing European data.  I was forced to come to a disappointing conclusion - we cannot continue to provide data for European stocks at this time.

Things may change as some point in the future, but for now, we're going to have to end our Extra/EU and Extra+ services.  The last day we will provide data for LSE, Euronext and German stocks will be March 1st, 2012.

If you currently subscribe to our Extra/EU or Extra+ services and your account expires after March 1st, watch your email box for a letter from us explaining what your options are.  You'll have a choice of either a pro-rated refund or the ability to convert your remaining time into one of our other charting services.

If you are a member of our Basic, Extra or ExtraRT services, nothing with change as a result of this decision.

Again, my apologies if you have come to rely on us for your European chart analysis.  This was not an easy decision to make.  In the end, there just wasn't enough demand to justify the steep costs.

- Chip

The Evolution of the StockCharts Public ChartLists Area

Our Public ChartLists area is amazing.  If you haven't looked at it recently, you really should.  Lots of great people taking the time to share their analysis work with the world essentially for free.

And while I really do appreciate and enjoy the Public ChartList area, in the back of my mind, I always knew that we - StockCharts - could make it even better.  I want it to be a place that rewards hard work by the authors, encourages them to continue sharing their charts, and makes it easy for the readers to find content that matches their interests.

That last part in particular is a weak spot in our current system.  The current Public ChartList page is overwhelming to new readers.  Which list do I look at first?  Which one talks about what I'm interested in?  How reliable is this author?

And, on the author side, making your list really stand out from the others has always been a bit of a cat-and-mouse game with the rules.  How can I get lots of votes?  How can I add graphics to my list description?  How can I tie this Public ChartList that I've worked so hard on into my blog or my website?  etc. etc. etc.

Recently, we announced some rules changes for the Public ChartList area that were intended to help with some of these issues.  After careful consideration, I've decided that just changing the existing rules wasn't enough.  So we've scraped those plans and we started working on something much bigger - a complete rework of our Public ChartList area that will reinvigerate both the authors and the readers.  At a high-level, it will try to accomplish the following goals:

• A continual reward system with many levels - not just the single "Hall of Fame" designation.
• An easy-to-use categorization system that helps users find content they want to read quickly.
• An iron-clad voting system that will eliminate voting fraud.
• A list ranking system that is based on more than just simple voting.
• A notification system that lets readers know when content they are interested in has been updated.

I will send out more specifics about these features when they are closer to completion.  However I hope that these high-level descriptions are enough to get both old-timers and new-comers excited about the future.

The other main goal of this project is to have the actual "work" of a Public ChartList author be the same as it is right now - to create great charts and analysis.  Rewards in the form of readers, votes and high ranking should happen automatically.  While that been true in the past, with these coming improvements, it will be even more true in the future.

When?  Well, we're hoping to have the new system ready by February 1st - but there is still much work to do and it might March 1st before all the dust settles.  I'll put up another post when things are closer to completion.

- Chip

New Feature: Uploading Ticker Symbols from a Spreadsheet

During the last ChartCon conference in Seattle, one of the most common pieces of feedback I got was "Is there any way to upload a list of ticker symbols into a ChartList from Excel?"

By the end of the conference, I was promising everyone that we'd add that feature to the site "very soon."

It turns out that "very soon" means... today!

We're pleased to announce the Beta test version of our new "Add Symbols -Upload" feature for Basic and Extra members that want to insert symbols from a spreadsheet into one of their StockCharts ChartLists.

You'll find this new feature on the "Edit" view page of any ChartList.  It's in the "Add Symbols" box.  Here's a screenshot:

The new feature is inside the blue box.

Step One: Create/find a spreadsheet with a column of ticker symbols that you want to import into a ChartList.  Note: A ChartList cannot hold more than 500 ticker symbols.  You can use Excel or any program that can create CSV files.

Step Two: Copy and paste that column of ticker symbols into the first column of a new spreadsheet.  Note: Make sure the column doesn't have any heading and that there aren't any black rows in the middle of the list.

Step Three: (Optional) Add "Descriptions" for each symbol into the second column of that spreadsheet.

Step Four: Save that new spreadsheet to your harddisk in "Comma Separated Variable (CSV)" format.

Step Five: Log onto StockCharts and either create a New ChartList or view one of your existing ChartLists in "Edit" view.

Step Six: Click the "Choose File" button in the "Add Symbols" area.

Step Seven: Select your newly saved CSV file from your hard disk.

Step Eight: Click "Upload"

Step Nine: Review the preview of your import and fix any problems that get reported, then click "OK"

Step Ten: Stand back as the magic happens!

When the dust clears, you should have default format charts in your ChartList for each of the ticker symbols in your spreadsheet.

If you have any problems with our Beta test version of things, please let our Support Team know.

Enjoy!

- Chip

Search Completed! StockCharts New Site Search Feature

StockCharts' "secret shame" is now a thing of the past...

For far too long we have not had a unified site search tool for our website.  Oh sure, we had lots of boxes labelled "Search" scattered throughout the site.  But each of them gave deferent results!   The search box on the homepage gave results from some areas of the site - the search box on the Support page gave different results.  The search box in the blog area gave still different results and, if you wanted to search for a stock symbol, you needed to use the search in the Symbol Catalog area.  Did I mention that s.c.a.n. had yet another search tool built into it?

Chaos!  Utter chaos!

Most people either muddled through or gave up trying to use our search boxes because the results just didn't make sense.

No longer!

Today, I'm very happy to announce the official launch of our new site search feature.  If I was smarter, we'd have given it a nifty name like "Siri" or "Jeeves" but instead, we're just going to call it "Search" and I encourage you to try it out.

The easiest way to try it out is to use the "Search the Site" box on the right side of our homepage.  Just type in your question and press the "Search" button.

In addition to that "boring" way I wanted to tell you about the "super power user" trick that gives you access to a "secret" search box built into all of our pages!  Just click on the dropdown in the "Create a Chart" bar at the top of any page (the dropdown normally says "SharpChart") and select "Site Search" instead.  Then enter your search phrase into the text box beside the dropdown and click "Go!"  Voila!  Now you can search for anything from anywhere.

When you look at the new search results page, you'll notice several new features including colored icons that tell you at a glance which area of our website each search result comes from.  You'll also see a highlighted date for any results that come from a dated blog article.  Finally, be sure to check out the row of "section tabs" at the top of the search box.  You can click on any of them to look at results from just that part of our site.  When in doubt, just make sure that "Everything" is clicked.

Here are some other things you might not notice at first:

• Results from the s.c.a.n. user-to-user help area are sorted based on the votes that both the question and the top answers have received so, in theory, the higher the s.c.a.n. article in the search results, the more popular it was with the s.c.a.n. community.
• In many cases, when you click on a search result to view the original article, your search terms will be highlighted in yellow when you view that article.
• Results from the Public ChartList area are sorted based on the popularity of the ChartList containing the result.
• You can create advanced scans with AND and OR logic.  There's a link explaining how to do that directly under the Search box on the Search results page.
• You can type in natural language questions in the search box and we'll do a pretty good job of answering them - not always perfect - but actually pretty darn good in many cases.

So, stop overlooking that loney "Search" box on our web pages.  It may still look the same, but it is now MUCH more powerful than it has every been.

- Chip

 

CALLING ALL EUROPEAN CHART WATCHERS

In May of this year, StockCharts.com added 15-minute delayed coverage for the two major European exchanges - the Euronext and the London Stock Exchange - to our website.

In July, we added Deutsche Borse stocks on an End-of-Day basis.

In August, we announced our new ExtraRT/EU realtime service with realtime coverage for Euronext and LSE stocks and 15-minute delayed coverage of German stocks.

So far - I have to be honest here - the response from European investors have been very underwhelming.  We aren't quite sure why.  Prior to the rollout, we received tons of messages from investors in the UK and Europe asking us for various European charts.  Now that we've delivered that capability, we're not seeing those investors signing up for the service.

So I'd like to take a moment and ask for feedback from the European readers of this blog.  If you are based in Europe, please let me know whether or not you signed up for our ExtraRT/EU service.  If you did, is it delivering for you?  If you didn't, what has held you back so far?

Feel free to enter whatever thoughts you have - I will read the comments myself but I won't post them so people can be free to speak their mind on this issue.

We need to understand what the key issues are with our European charting service so we can address them.  Otherwise, the service will have to be shuttered due to the high data expenses involved and the low subscription rate.

Thank you for any and all feedback on this issue.

Chip Anderson
President, StockCharts.com, Inc. 

P.S. Please let your friends know about this post so we can get as much feedback as possible.  Thanks!

SRC / StockCharts New Century Wall Chart Special Deal

I am extremely happy to announce that StockCharts.com is now working with the good folks at Security Research Company (S.R.C.) to bring you high-quality historical financial charts based on their huge database of financial information.  In case you are not familiar with SRC's work, they've been publishing their amazing charts since they started back in 1933(!) primarily in printed form and more recently in online format.  You can learn more about SRC by clicking this link.

The first result of our new association with SRC is an amazing new wall chart that is only available to StockCharts.com users like you.  Called the "New Century" chart, this huge printed chart lets you trace the history of the stock market back to 1906 via the Dow, the S&P 500, the NYSE and later the NASAQ.  It includes recessions, presidents, major historical events, and the gross domestic product of the US for comparison purposes.  Here's a thumbnail:

Did I mention this thing is big?  24" tall by 36" wide makes is perfect for framing and displaying anywhere.

Now, this poster normally goes for $89.00.  However, because this is the start of a new relationship between SRC and StockCharts.com, we got permission to offer it at an amazing discount for THIS WEEKEND ONLY!  If you order this chart before Tuesday, it will only cost you $29.95 plus $4.95 shipping.  Click here to order your copy today.

(I'm sorry I sound like a car salesman here but I really love big historical charts and this really is an amazing deal that I hope everyone takes advantage of.)

Anyway, regardless of if you get this wall chart or not, everyone can look forward to more great collaborations between SRC and StockCharts.com in the weeks and months to come.  Some of the things we are working on will be truly stunning.  I can't wait to show them to you.  Stay tuned...

- Chip

SEC Warns Against Investment Seminar Fraud - We Couldn't Agree More

Today the SEC issued warnings against Investor Seminar scams including seminars given by Investools.  We are very VERY glad to see the SEC cracking down on these kind of things.  I strongly encourage everyone to read and re-read this article about the SEC's actions and the warning signs you should watch for when evaluating any investment service - even StockCharts.com.

There is no easy path to wealth.  There is no easy path to wealth.  There is no easy path to wealth...

- Chip

Updated Browser Speed Results - Is there a new King?

Here's another set of browser performance results - this time from the good folks at Lifehacker.com.

The chart above shows the "cold start" times for the browsers they tested.  The article has results from many other tests that they ran.

In the overall category, Chrome has fallen to last place(!) in overall performance while the little-used browser "Opera" has taken top honors.  If you are looking for a better web browsing experience, maybe now is the time to give Opera a closer look.

- Chip