StockCharts.com - Blogs

Today we are removing European-based charts from our system.  As I mentioned in a couple of previous announcements, we did not receive the support we needed from our customers to justify the increased cost of providing European data on our website.

At this point, everyone who is a paying subscriber for one of our European services should have been contacted by our billing team with the options available to them.  Those that chose to stay with StockCharts (yea!) and focus on North American markets will notice that their account has now been converted into an ExtraRT account.

If for some reason you are a paying subscriber to one of our European services and you did not hear from us, please contact our Customer Support team immediately.

If you disagree with this decision and are disappointed/frustrated/furious/unhappy/etc. an online iPetition has been started where you can let us know that you think we should bring back our European service.  Click here to sign it.  We will be watching that petition to see if it gets enough signatures to justify adding that data back.

In case you are wondering about specifics, this change means that we are:

• Removing all LSE and Euronext ticker symbols (.L, .DE and .EU) from our system.
• Deleting all saved charts that reference .L, .DE or .EU symbols
• Removing all predefined scan results based on LSE, German or Euronext stocks
• Deleting all Bullish Percent symbols that are based on LSE, German or Euronext stocks
• Converting all European stock indexes back into "End-of-Day" indexes - specifically $DAX,$AEX,$BEL,$CAC,$N100,$N150,$PSI, and $FTSE
• Remove LSE, German or Euronext based groups from our scanning tools

Again, we are not happy about this change and are doing it because it is necesary from a business perspective.  Hopefully there will come a point in the future where this data can be reincorporated into the website in a more successful manner.

- Chip

In case you haven't noticed yet, we've updated the look of our SharpCharts Workbench page.  We think the new look is more modern, cleaner and more helpful for new users.  In addition, we've tweaked it to make the workbench a little easier for iPad users.  Finally, for many users there are a couple of nice performance improvements.

The updated look includes nicer visual boundaries for each area of the page and icons to make the important links easier to find and use.  The icons also allowed us to shorten are reorganize some of the links.

The great news is that for people that use Google Chrome, Apple's Safari and similar browsers, we were also able to decrease the vertical size of the upper area.  Not by a ton mind you - 4 pixels - but for people with smaller screens, every verical pixel counts.

Unfortunately, for people that use IE or Firefox, the verticle size increased by 3 pixles despite our best efforts.  If that is an issue for you, please see this blog post about ways you can optimize your screen.

As a side note, Internet Explorer remains a "problem child" for web programmers.  Even the latest version does lots of things "wrong" which we have to work around (and it gets way worse if you have an old version).  If you use StockCharts.com regularly with Internet Explorer, take a moment to try out either Google Chrome, Opera, or Apple Safari (which also runs under Windows) and see what you've been missing (i.e. faster load times and better looking pages).

We also made a change that should help people that use an iPad with our SharpCharts Workbench page.  iPad users will notice that all of the controls on the page are bigger than they used to be which should make it easier for you to use them with a finger-based tablet.

(Before you write in and ask, we still do not have any specific plans to create an iPad app.  Why?  Because it would look and work pretty much exactly like our website does now when you access it via Safari on the iPad.  Our general plan is to continue slowly tweaking our current website to make it more tablet friendly.)

One piece of feedback we've gotten from several people about the new look has to do with the repositioning of the "Forward" and "Back" arrows used for navigating your saved charts.  The arrows were enlarged and separated to make it more apparent what they do so that more people would start to use them (they have to this point been a fairly under-used feature of the page).

Several people have pointed out that it is somewhat more inconvenient to move your mouse over to the upper left to click the "Next" arrow.  While we agree, I want to make sure that everyone is aware of a keyboard shortcut that make clicking on those arrows much less necessary:

To instantly move to the NEXT saved chart in your ChartList, hold down the CTRL key and press the "." (period) key.  Note that the period key also has the ">" character on it which is why we chose it for "NEXT".

To instantly move to the PREVIOUS saved chart, hold down the CTRL key and press the "," (comma) key.  Note that the comma key also has the "<" character on it - thus it is the "PREVIOUS" key.

Hopefully that will help power users speed through their saved charts even faster than before.

If you have any feedback for us about these changes - either positive or negative - please enter it below.  I won't be able to respond to it all, but it will get read and considered.

We will continue to improve and evolve the website over time.  We've been doing it for almost 12 years now and we have no plans on stopping.  We appreciate everyone's input into that process and everyone can look forward to lots of addition improvements in the coming weeks and months.

Enjoy!
- Chip

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