StockCharts.com - Blogs

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

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

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