Overview
Welcome. I’m Howard Reisman the CEO of Stock Rover and I would like to share with you a brief video covering the basics of charting in Stock Rover.
Chart Mode
The first thing we are going to do is get Stock Rover into chart mode. We do this by selecting Chart from the left-hand grey selector menu. So, let’s start by getting a basic chart of Microsoft. We can do this by entering the company name or ticker into the ticker box. Here we see a two-year price chart of Microsoft.
Now let’s explore some of the things we can change.
Chart Options
Date Range
First off, we can change the date range. From 1 day to 10 years. We can do this via the date control buttons on the bottom. The More Button give some additional date range options. You can also enter totally custom dates via the date controls on the right. Let’s enter a date range that shows over 12 years of data for Microsoft. Here we can see the chart of Microsoft starting in January 2007. We can switch this chart to a percentage return chart to get a better view of the return of Microsoft over that period. We do this by clicking on settings and selecting Price percentage chart. We see that over the last 12 years, Microsoft has returned around 260% price appreciation.
Dividends
Let’s consider what Microsoft returned if you factor in dividends. Stock Rover does the calculation by assuming that any dividends received are immediately reinvested in the stock. We can switch to dividend adjusted returns by clicking on settings and checking adjust price for dividends. A shortcut to do this is to click on the label up here in the left-hand corner of the chart which toggles between price change and dividend adjusted return. So now we see that that dividend adjusted return of Microsoft over the last 12 years is actually in the neighborhood of 365%. Quite a difference.
Logarithmic Charts
I’m going to switch the primary ticker to Amazon to show some additional charting options in Stock Rover. As you can see in the chart Amazon has had quite a rise. One way to get a better perspective on the increase is to switch the chart to logarithmic mode. This changes the y axis so that each y interval is the same percentage increase rather than the same dollar increase. Logarithmic charts have the effect of giving a truer feel for a stock’s performance. After changing to logarithmic mode, we can see that Amazon’s rise is less explosive, more orderly.
Candlestick Charts
Another thing we can do with charts is candlesticks. To see candlestick better I am going to switch the period to three months to get daily candlesticks. We get a candlestick chart by clicking on settings and changing to candlestick mode. Here we see the daily 3-month candlestick chart. Green days are up days, red days are down days. A mouse-over can give you the daily detail. The fat part of the candle shows the open and close price. The tails show the daily trading range. For up days, in green, the open is the bottom of the fat part candle and the close is the top of the fat part. For down days, in red, it is reversed. Note if you go for longer charting periods, say 5 years, the candlesticks automatically switch to weekly. If you go really long, 10 years or more, the periods become two weeks.
Saving Chart Images
Another thing you can do with Stock Rover is to save an image of the chart to disk. Going to change back to a 2-year chart and to a price chart. If I wanted to save this image of Amazon to disk, I would just click on the camera icon here. This will save an image of your chart to your default download folder in PNG format.
Chart Display Modes
A few other things of note. When charts are displayed with the table, which we get by clicking on all. Here we have the insight panel is another feature of Stock Rover minimized. We can see the table and the chart together. Let’s switch the data set to the Dow 30. You see that Amazon is also included in this even though it is not in the Dow 30 because it was added in the Quotes, we can uncheck that so we have the true Dow 30. So whatever row is selected in the table by default would be charted, so as we change the row selections, we get different charts. This is the default behavior of Stock Rover. You can change behavior via settings, you simply go to turn off link main table to chart and then as you click on various rows the chart stays the same. The chart now functions completely independently of the table.
Crosshairs
I am going to switch back to chart mode and show you a couple of other features of Stock Rover’s charting facility. One thing you may have noticed is that as I move the mouse the crosshairs are enabled and the price changes in the upper left-hand corner. If you find this behavior distracting you can turn it off via the settings, just by clicking crosshairs off.
Chart Reset
Finally, a chart can be wiped clean to the default state via this reset button. So, I am going to load a chart up a bit with a bunch of goodies that Stock Rover has and then reset it. So first let’s put a comparison ticker in. Let’s put in Lowes, because we have Home Depot. Then let’s add some technicals such as a Simple Moving Average. We can add a volume chart, relative strength chart, and maybe a fundamental chart too of Price to Earnings. So, you can see there is a lot going on here. If you want to reset the chart to a clean state you just hit reset and then it clears it. Then when you click your next ticker you get a simple price chart.
Conclusion
So, that’s a brief tour of charting in Stock Rover. There is much more to charting in Stock Rover such as comparison tickers, events, technical charts, fundamental charts and ratio charts, all of which will be covered in separate videos. Thank you for watching.
