StockCharts.com - Blogs

Chartists can add empty space above the main chart window by adding a fictitious “price” indicator. Chartists can also add space to the right using the “extra bars” feature. By adding space to the right and above, chartists can extend channel trendlines, add Fibonacci extensions and extend cycles to make projections. The chart below shows the Dow Industrials with added space. Notice how I used the Fibonacci Retracements Tool to add an upper extension to determine the price at a point on the channel trend line. To do this, first select the Fibonacci Retracements Tool when annotating the SharpChart. Hold the CTLR key down when drawing and the extensions will appear. The upper trend line extends to 18380 in December 2013. This is NOT a prediction! Just an example. The second image shows the settings needed to create this chart.



 Click these images for a live chart

StockCharts.com users can invert a price series by using the symbol “$ONE”. Simply create a ratio chart using $ONE as the numerator and the other symbol as the denominator. The chart below shows $ONE:$VIX in the main window and the normal $VIX in the lower window. Inverted $VIX can be handy because the normal $VIX is inversely correlated with the stock market. In other words, $VIX moves up when the stock market moves down. This relation changes to a positive correlation when using inverted $VIX ($ONE:$VIX). 


Click this image for a live chart

Recently (on May 6th actually), we received the following message in our support queue:

The above chart (PCG) should be found by the following scan, but is not. Can you tell me what is wrong with the last line of code? Each of the lines are true but the last line is not working. I tested it by adding a line at a time. Syntax is correct, but it is not finding all valid charts. Is this a problem with the scan engine?

[type = stock] and [country = us] and [optionable is true] 
and [close >= 10] and [close <= 200] 
and [today's sma(50,volume) >= 500000] 
and [Slow Stoch %K(8,3) <= 40.0] 
and [[daily max(65,high) - daily min(65,low)] / close > 0.30]

Thanks, 
Name Withheld

Have you ever encountered something similar?  It is a very common issue for people who create their own scans.  Here was our response:

Dear Name,

Thank you for sending us that question.

When researching this kind of issue, the first step is to determine which clause in your scan is excluding PCG. The next step is to create a chart with the data that the scan engine is looking at. Finally, plug in the data from the chart into the problematic clause to see what is going on.

To find out which clause is causing the problem, first place each clause on a separate line starting with the "and" the joins the clause to the rest of the scan. You've already done that.

Next, add "//" to the front of the bottom clause to "comment out" that clause and re-run the scan and see if PCG appears:

[type = stock] and [country = us] and [optionable is true] 
and [close >= 10] and [close <= 200] 
and [today's sma(50,volume) >= 500000] 
and [Slow Stoch %K(8,3) <= 40.0] 
//and [[daily max(65,high) - daily min(65,low)] / close > 0.30]

In this case, PCG does appear which means that the bottom-most clause is the problem. (If it didn't appear, we'd comment out the next-to-last clause and try again.)

Next, we need to create a chart that shows the data for that clause. Using the "Starting ___ days ago" box on the Scan Workbench, you can quickly determine that January 31st was 65 trading days ago. Thus we need a daily chart going from January 31st to May 6th. Here's an example:

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=PCG&p=D&st=2013-01-31&en=2013-05-06&id=p53729067476

Next, we can use the "Inspect" feature to determine the highest high (48.50) and lowest low (40.57) and current close (46.50) on that chart.

Finally, we plug that information into the formula in the clause:

[[48.50 - 40.57 ] / 46.50 > 0.30] 
which becomes 
[ 7.93 / 46.50 > 0.30 ] 
which becomes
[ 0.1705376344086 > 0.30 ]

Which is false. Which is why PCG was excluded from your scan results.

Thanks again for using StockCharts.com, 
Cole Johnson 
StockCharts Support 
http://stockcharts.com

And, sure enough, Name later confirmed that he had meant to use a less than sign "<" instead of a greater than sign ">" in that final clause.

If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, try following Cole's steps for finding the issue:

1. Determine which clause is causing the problem.
2. Create a chart that contains all the "data points" for that clause.
3. Plug-in those data points to the clause to see what's going on.

- Chip

Chartists can use the Percent Price Oscillator (PPO) to measure the percentage difference between price and an exponential moving average. The PPO is measures the percentage difference between two exponential moving averages. We can set the shorter EMA equal to one and this will reflect the closing price. We can then set the longer EMA to measure the distance from price (shorter EMA). The example below shows the PPO(1,200,1), which measures the percentage difference between the S&P 500 (1-period EMA) and its 200-day EMA. I set the signal line at one to hide it on this chart. The S&P 500 is currently 8.457% above its 200-day EMA.


Click this image for a live chart.

SharpCharts users can place indicators above the main window, below the main window or as an overlay in the main window. These choices are available using the drop down menu for “position”. Positioning MACD “behind price” makes it easy to compare indicator movement with price movement. The chart below shows the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) with MACD positioned behind the price plot. Note that I removed the histogram and signal line by changing the parameters to (12,26,1). The last number (1) makes the signal line a 1-day EMA of MACD, which essentially hides it. The signal line was re-added by using the advanced options to add a 9-period EMA to MACD. Nifty huh!

Chartists sometimes need to count back a specific number of days on a chart. This can be to set a cycle high/low or simply to count the number of trading days since a high/low. Chartists can easily count by using the cycle lines tool on SharpCharts. When annotating a chart, this tool can be found in the middle of the top tool bar. Click the icon to activate, move to the chart and click-drag to place the cycle lines on the chart.



The chart above shows the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) with the cycle lines starting on Thursday. Chartists can click-drag the gray box at the top or bottom to move the entire cycle. Chartists can click-drag the yellow box at the top or bottom of the second line to expand or contract the cycle. As the number shows, this cycle is set at 50 days and the second line extends to February 5th. See our ChartSchool article for more on cycle lines.

Chartists can quantify the difference between the two Bollinger Bands by using the BandWidth indicator. Bollinger Bands start with a 20-day simple moving average of closing prices. The actual bands are then placed two standard deviations above and below this moving average. These equidistant bands expand as volatility increases and contract as volatility decreases. John Bollinger theorized that volatility contractions lead to volatility expansions, or price moves.



Chartists can eyeball the price chart to identify volatility contractions and use the BandWidth indicator to compare bandwidth over time. BandWidth is simply the upper band less the lower band divided by the middle band. This shows the difference as a percentage of the middle band, which allows user to evaluate bandwidth over time. Chartists can plot the Bandwidth indicator and easily spot periods of low volatility. You can read more about the BandWidth indicator in our ChartSchool.

StockCharts.com has three indicators that separate positive (up) and negative (down) price movement: the Directional Movement Indicators, Aroon and the Vortex Indicators. These indicators are shown as pairs with the green line measuring positive price movement and the red line measuring negative price movement. These indicator pairs trigger signals when the lines cross. Some crosses are short and only last a few days. Some crosses last for weeks or even months.

Chartists can reduce whipsaws by requiring the indicator to reach a specific threshold to validate a signal. This means the signal would require two steps. Using the Aroon brothers as an example, a bullish signal is triggered when Aroon Up crosses above Aroon Down AND Aroon Up hits 100. The threshold could be 30 for the Directional Movement Indicators (+DI and –DI), and 1.1 for the Vortex Indicators (+VI and –VI).


Click this image for a live chart

The chart for the Dow Industrials shows all three indicator pairs triggering bullish signals in late November and early December. Moreover, these indicators remain in bull mode. Aroon Up crossed above Aroon Down and reached 100. Aroon Down needs to cross above Aroon Up and reach 100 to reverse this signal. +DI crossed above –DI and exceeded 30 to confirm. –DI needs to cross above +DI and above 30 to negate this signal. +VI crossed above –VI and exceeded 1.1 to confirm. –VI needs to cross +VI and exceed 1.1 to reverse this signal. See our ChartSchool for more information on these indicators.

StockCharts.com subscribers can view their ChartLists in many different formats. These include Summary, 10 Per Page, ChartBook, Gallery, MarketCarpet and CandleGlance. Today we will look at the stocks in the Dow Industrials using the Summary and CandleGlance modes. First, start out with a SharpChart in your desired ChartList. The example below shows IBM in the "Stocks-Dow Industrials" ChartList. Next, click "view all" to see 10 per page.



The view all mode opens the door to the various viewing options. At the top of the page, chartists can use the drop down list to change the viewing format. The example below shows the summary mode, which can be sorted by the different column headings. This summary is sorted by %Change to see the leaders at the top. Notice that IBM and HP led the way on Thursday.



Chartists looking for a quick overview of the charts can choose the CandleGlance option to see 30 charts per page. This is an easy way to scroll through dozens of charts. You can even add indicators and change the timeframe.

Chartists can create a performance chart using the “create a chart” box at the top of every web page. Simply enter up to six symbols separated by a comma in the symbol entry box. Leave the selection on SharpChart and click go. This will create a SharpChart showing the performance for these six symbols. The example below shows the performance for six major index ETFs since January 1st (year-to-date). 


Click this image for a live chart

In addition to annotating this chart, the red boxes highlight three unique features. First, chartists can check the box to make the first symbol the baseline. In this example, SPY would become the baseline and performance would be measured against SPY. Second, the period setting can be changed. In addition to daily data, users can see intraday, weekly or monthly performance metrics. Third, user can set the start and end dates to completely customize this chart.