Chapter 6. Charting

Four Kinds of Charts: Line, Bar (OHLC), Candle, Equivolume

You are now an expert in Quote sheets so its time to rise to the same level with charts. These charts will do things you did not know charts could do.

"Click and Change" Charts

One of the best things about ErlangerQuote compared to all other programs is what we call "click and change" charts. You can have a quote sheet full of stocks, click on any symbol in that quote sheet and any chart that has the same color Sym dropdown as the quote sheet it will instantly update its contents to display the stock on which you clicked. In ErlangerQuote this is almost instantaneous. ErlangerQuote also has an AutoCycle feature that will rotate through every stock in your quote sheet and update the charts as you watch. If the network is slow updating can take several seconds and on rare occasions as long as one minute.

Scrolling and Scaling

The story of the stock is in its history, so we made scrolling and scaling super easy with ErlangerQuote.. When using charts, the ability to find past support and resistance is key to understanding the stock's pattern. Most charting software uses scroll bars to move the chart horizontally back in time, however you will notice there are no horizontal scroll bars on ErlangerQuote charts. So how do you scroll to see previous dates that are off chart, e.g., to the left?

Horizontal Position (the x-Axis) or Going Back in Time

To move back in time (i.e. to change the horizontal position of the chart) click on the chart and hold down the left mouse button. It will change to a hand with two tiny horizontal arrows. Now drag the chart to the right to reveal data on the left and drag it to the left to move forward in time. As you do this, notice how the dates move as you drag and how the price scale adjusts to the changing prices so that the chart is always occupying the entire chart height? If autoscale is not on, then you will have to repeatedly readjust the scale manually (autoscale is covered below). It is also possible to use the left-right arrow keys to go back in time. If you go back in time and want to return to the hard right edge of the chart, just press the Home key and shazaam! The chart scoots right back to the last time period printed on the chart. Take a really close look at the mouse pointer after it changes to the hand-grabbing icon. Just to the right of the wrist is an arrow that shows which way you can move. When you click on the chart, the arrow points left right, meaning that you can move left or right to look at the chart data.

Horizontal Size or Compressing Time

Changing the horizontal SIZE of the chart is just as slick. To change the horizontal size, click and drag BELOW the TIME AXIS. This will compress or expand the amount of time information displayed in the chart.

Vertical Size (the y-Axis)

To change the VERTICAL SIZE, click and drag the mouse on the RIGHT side of the PRICE AXIS. Clicking and dragging the mouse in the area to the RIGHT of the price axis will shrink or expand the vertical size (or amount) of information in the chart. (Clicking and dragging the mouse on the LEFT of the price axis (actually on the chart, itself) will change the horizontal position of the data in the chart (as explained above).

Chart Scale

The main purpose for charts, of course, is to get a visual display of the price movements in whatever it is that you trade. There are three ways to view the information (chart type) and three ways to tweak the information so that it is displayed properly (chart scale). Let’s explain chart scale first. For the same reason that Canada looks smaller than the United States on a globe and, yet, it is actually bigger by almost 132,000 square miles (take a look at a paper map – Canada is bigger), charts display information in a sort of longitude and latitude. We call it the chart scale and you can choose one of the three methods below:

Log Scale

The log scale is a logarithmic formula that will divide the screen into factors of 10, so the distance from 1 to 10 is the same as 10 to 100 and so on. You would use this scale when you want to see small price changes in a high priced stock.

AutoScale

AutoScale gives your chart the normal linear scale with the special feature that the vertical scale adjusts to fit the price high and low of the chart. This guarantees the entire vertical space of the chart is used. If you turn this off you will have to drag the chart vertically at times to adjust it as you scroll back in time.

AutoScale Price Data Only

Autoscale price data only does the same thing as AutoScale, but eliminates any price studies in the adjustment, so, for example, a moving average that is well below the price chart will not be included in the adjusting and will be clipped. This allows the price chart to be easier to see.

Chart Types

There are four ways you can view a price chart in ErlangerQuote. Three of them work with the standard chart window, and they are the Line chart, Bar chart, and the Candlestick chart. There is also a Equivolume chart that can be accessed as a workspace plugin.

Line Chart

If you click on a chart (make sure the Sym and Inv dropdown menus are white in the chart) and then click on the Line icon in the chart toolbar, your chart will change to look like the one below. This is called the Line chart. It’s a connect-the-dots type of chart and is very useful when you are doing overlays of indexes or want to compare two or more stock prices (comparing two candlestick or bar graphs on the same chart is difficult.). The Line chart does not provide the open, high, or low information that many traders like to see.

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Figure 1 Line Chart connects each trading interval with a straight line

Bar or OHLC Chart

The Bar chart, or Open, High, Low, Close, (OHLC) chart displays much more information than line charts.

Figure 2 The bar chart shows the high, low, open, and close

What is unique about the bar chart is that it shows four important data points in a bar.

Open: the opening price of the stock at the beginning of the interval.

High: the highest price the stock reached in the interval.

Low: the lowest price the stock reached in the interval.

Close: the closing or final price of the stock at the end of the interval.

You can see this in the figure below. Each bar represents price changes that occurred in a segment of time set by the Interval (time period) that you want to follow. If you use a 5-minute interval, the first five-minute bar would start at 9:30am (EST) and would end at 9:35am (EST). If you follow daily bars, each daily bar would cover the trading period from 9:30am (EST) until 4:00pm. The height of the OHLC bar represents the high and low of the price movement during the time period charted. The two little horizontal ticks on the bar indicate the open of the trading period (tick on the LEFT side of the bar), while the tick on the RIGHT side indicates the close. If the price opened low and closed higher the bar colors default will draw the line blue. If the price opened high and closed lower the bar color default will draw the line red.

Figure 3 Zooming in on the Bar Chart

Candlesticks

Candlesticks are similar to bar charts. They show the open, high, low and close in a more visually appealing way. A Japanese rice trader developed candlestick charts during the 1700s, using them to follow the price of rice based on seasonal supply and demand. The Japanese developed a series of "runners" who gathered prices from one village to another and returned them to the "chartist". Like NASDAQ stocks today, rice was traded in an auction system, and prices opened, moved around throughout the season, and then settled or closed, so it was possible to produce an open, high, low and close for rice prices.

Figure 4 The candlestick chart shows the open, high, low, and close using a body and two wicks

The body of the candlestick is a rectangle that represents the open and close prices for the interval. If the price opened low and closed higher the candlestick color default will draw the line white. If the price opened high and closed lower the candlestick color default will draw the line red.[KO1] .

Figure 5 Zooming in on the Candlestick Chart

The two small vertical shafts above and below the candlestick body have several names, like whiskers, shadows or wicks. We will refer to them as wicks because candlesticks have wicks, not whiskers or shadows.. The top wick tells how high the stock traded in the interval while the lower wick tells how low the stock traded.

In candlesticks, the body is always drawn between the open and the close and this will determine the body color of the candle. The candlestick on the left opened high, moved higher, then traded lower, but didn’t close at its low. The price closed lower than the open, so the candlestick is red. Reading candlesticks is a special art that many traders enjoy. In our example, the white up-candle has a smaller lower wick compared to the slightly longer upper wick. This candle indicates that since the open and the low were about the same, there was very little downward pressure, or indecision about what the low was. However in the case of the wick on top, which is higher, there was more disagreement about the high, and the close eventually settled below the high by a larger amount.

The second candlestick shows that the price attempted to trade higher, but was unable to sustain an upward movement and even began to sell off. Obviously stating that the sentiment seems to have turned. The patterns developed by candlestick combinations encompass a very clever "language" full of colorful terms, like ‘Three Advancing Soldiers’ and ‘Dark Cloud Cover’. Some patterns are fairly easy to understand, for example, "The Bearish Engulfing Pattern” reveals resistance and downward price pressure. An even more significant pattern is the “Collapsing Doji Star Pattern”, which is a top reversal signal. Learning these terms and the patterns that they describe will increase your understanding of the candlestick charts. More information can be found in Steve Nison’s book Japanese Candlestick Charting Technique” and his second titled, Beyond Candlesticks: New Japanese Charting Techniques Revealed.

Breakout Bars

This icon turns the breakout bars on the bar charts on and off. The bars are enabled in Chart Preferences.

Equivolume

Richard Arms developed the Equivolume chart in his book Volume Cycles in the Stock Market, Equis International, Salt Lake City, UT, 1994. Instead of viewing volume as a secondary indicator at the bottom of a chart, volume is elevated to be as important as price. Indeed, its proponents are so firm that volume is the primary element of trading that they say, "if the market wore a wristwatch it would be divided into shares, not hours". This encapsulates the essence of the Equivolume chart, to view trades in price and shares traded rather than the price of those shares alone.

In ErlangerQuote, the Equivolume chart is a "workspace" Plugin accessed by selecting File->New->Tenlight's Workspace Equivolume. Don't be fooled by the Equivolume chart, its not a candlestick chart, its much more. Look closely at the candles in the figure below of Apple Computer. Note how the rectangular candlestick bodies on the left beginning of the chart are "fatter" than the bodies on the "skinny" candlesticks on the chart right? Whats up?

The Equivolume chart uses Volume during that interval to control the "width" of the candlestick body. The wicks are the same as a regular candlestick. Thus a fat candle means that the volume was high while a skinny one means that the volume was low. We know that low volume often means the movement does not confirm a price move as much as large volume. Thus with an Equivolume chart we can see movements in the price that are very significant. For example notice the large red candles at the beginning of the chart showing that the fall was very significant.

The basic interpretation of the Equivolume chart is that short fat candles indicate a small change in price, but heavy volume. This has a tendency to occur at turning points. Tall and narrow candles indicate a small change in volume, but a large swing in price. This is seen often when prices are trending.

Figure 6 The Equivolume chart represents volume in the area of the rectangular candlestick body

Charts and the Slick Right Click

As mentioned before, the magic key to the ErlangerQuote interface is the right-click function. Right clicking on a chart background reveals the following menu. Let’s take a look at the commands.

Figure 7 The Right Click Menu for Charts

Add Alert

The Add Alert menu item should be called the Alerts R Us feature, because there are so many things that this powerful little menu item can do. Add Alert has two top submenus; Customize Alerts and Easy Alerts. We’ll get to the mass of single menu items below these two items soon.

Custom Alerts…(Simple Alerts)

The purpose of Customize Alerts… is to add an alert to the Alerts window, as shown below. This window gives a small graphic representation of a bell with a hammer, to represent a triggered or pending alert. The window allows you to navigate the alerts in a visual format like a windows file explorer. Pluses open items and the minus symbol means the item is completely open. We think of these as “simple alerts” because the graphics make them easy to understand.

Figure 8 The Alerts window showing a Pending Alert for HNP that has not be triggered yet

If you select Customize Alerts the dialog box below pops up.

Here we created an alert called “test” that will trigger when the Symbol HNP Field Last is At or Below (<=) the target of 25. The other setting for direction is At or Above (>=), so this kind of alert is somewhat limited. When the alert is finished it will show up in the Alerts window as a Pending alert, as shown above. Since Auto Reset is checked, when the alert is triggered it will auto reset (so it can be triggered again) and it will play the sound dinky.wav. The Alert window will move the alert to the Triggered area. The Alert List window will display the same information in textual format. You can click on Save and this Alert will be stored with the chart and available later to be used again, or modified.

Figure 9 The Add Alert dialog box adds alerts to the Alerts window

Easy Alerts…(Alerts Library) and Adding Alert Color Studies

On further thinking we Easy Alerts should have been called Alerts Library because this is really another incredibly powerful feature of ErlangerQuote whose name belies its depth, and who’s location is tucked away inconspicuously among its fairly complex right click menu.

What Easy Alerts does is give you a collection of premade and tested strategy formulas that can be used to create your alerts. In the figure below we have selected the Moving Average collection, and then selected the Price Crossing Above MA as the trigger.

Figure 10 The Easy Alert dialog box shows a library of formulas

This in turn puts the formulas in the formula box. As you can see in this example:

Close(5) > Move(Close,10,0,5) and Close(5),-1) <= Move(Close,10,0,5,-1)

The formula uses the close of the current 5-minute bar and the close of the previous 5-minute bar (the -1 means reference back one bar). This library is actually a great way to learn how to write formulas for ErlangerQuote and should be reference frequently.

Add Alerts to Anything As Anything

Now we need to ask ourselves what do we want to do with this alert that looks for the price crossing over the 10 minute moving average? The Add button is actually a drop down list that will direct your alert to anywhere in the context of your workspace, as shown in the Figure below. In my workspace I had a number of quote sheets and charts with different name and so the Add To menu is showing two charts first that the alert can be applied as a Simple Alert for: the chart NASDAQ (INDEX:COMPX) or as a Color Study to the current or selected chart. This last feature is very powerful, as the color study can give you a insightful visual aid for knowing when a breakout occurs and when it has occurred in the past. Below is the Color Study Alert for HGSI.

Figure 11 Adding an Alert to a Chart as a Color Study

Add an Alert to a Quote Sheet

The second set of places we can direct the Price Crossing Above MA Alert is to any of the quote sheets. If we select one of these, such as Vector Vest Mitch Picks, the Alert will be installed as a column in the quote sheet. Each cell in the column will be filled with a True of False for the stock in that row and that value will represent whether the stock price is above the 10 min MA (True=Green) or below the 10 min MA (False=Red).

Figure 11 Alert added to a quote sheet as a column formula

Add an Alert to a Scanner

You can direct the alert to be added to the scanner as criteria for selecting from you list of stocks. The Scanner dialog will appear, and the formula Price Above Moving Average will appear in the formula box. Below that is a space for the List that you will scan.

Figure 12 Alert added to a Scanner

Add Alerts From Current Chart Studies to Simple Alerts

Perhaps the most amazing Alerts that can be added are the ones that ErlangerQuote creates and adds to the bottom of the Add Alert menu. These can be seen in the figure below as Last > 65.27, Last < 65.27, Last > MOV(Close,10,0,60), etc.

Figure 13 The Alerts labeled “Last <> Value” on the Add Alert Submenu are based existing studies in the chart

When you select one of these items from the Add Alert submenu it sticks the Alert in the Simple Alert window as Pending. You can then go to that Window and check the Alerts properties to edit it or modify it as shown below.

Figure 14 Note the Price Crossing Above MA alert added from the prior operation

Cursor Tracking and Cursor Window

The Cursor Tracking and Cursor Window functions can be toggled using the right click menu (these two commands are also buttons on the Chart Toolbar). When selected, a check mark will appear in front of the name.

Cursor tracking is a horizontal and vertical crosshair set that follows the mouse as it moves over the chart. The color of the crosshair can be changed in chart preferences. The Cursor window is a small text box that displays chart values as the cursor moves over the chart. The default cursor window reports the price, date, time, open, high, low and close prices for an interval. Right clicking on the cursor window will display a dialog box for changing the font, the background and foreground color of the window text, and for turning on or off the studies included in the chart. Clicking and dragging it to a new location can reposition the cursor window. If you have studies in your chart the cursor window displays the value of the study when the cursor moves over it.

Figure 8 The Cursor Window and Cursor Tracking

Poetry in Motion: Chart Symbol/Interval Bar

We almost saved the best for last. The Symbol/Interval Bar is a toolbar that displayed at the bottom of a chart by right clicking and selecting Symbol/Interval Bar as shown in the figure below. The toolbar has a Sym dropdown with a "+"sign in the middle of it. To add symbols to the Symbol/Interval Bar, when that symbol is showing in the chart, click on the Sym+ button and that symbol will be added to the toolbar. In the figure, we clicked when the chart was showing Apple Computer and AAPL was loaded into the tab. The same thing exists on the right side of the chart for the Interval. Click the Inv+ button on the Inv dropdown menu and you'll add the current Interval to a new tab. On the chart we have added daily.

Figure 9 The Symbol/Interval Chart Tab Toolbar

In the figure below we have added a collection of symbols and intervals to the chart by clicking on the Sym+ and Inv+ buttons. The scroll bars or buttons are used to move the tabs to the left or right when there are more symbols or intervals than there is room to display. To delete Sym or Inv tabs, use the right click function and select Remove. Selecting Remove All with delete all the tabs for that part of the Sym/Inv toolbar that you right click on. For example, right clicking on one of the symbol tabs (AOL, perhaps) in Figure 10 and selecting Remove All would delete the AAPL, AOL, CSCO, and IBM tabs. Right clicking one of the interval tabs (d, perhaps) and selecting Remove All would delete the d, 5, 13, and 60 tabs.

We hope that by now you see the beauty of this approach. By simply clicking on the tab it is possible to toggle the chart to another security or another time interval. This approach saves time and valuable workspace. You can keep your mouse hovering over the chart and change everything on it in one place. Another terrific feature is the Auto Cycle, which allows you to set the cycle function to change your charts automatically, so you don’t even need to use the mouse. The Auto Cycle function can be toggled on and off by right clicking either side of the Sym/Inv toolbar and selecting Properties. The Auto Cycle dialog box will pop up and present two radio buttons. One button is for cycling through just symbols and the other one will cycle through the interval. The length of the pause before the chart cycles can be adjusted from the Main Toolbar by selecting the dropdown menu Tools->Auto Cycler. This command will display the Auto Cycler timer. Change the number in the box to set the number of seconds pause between cycles.

Figure 10A The tab toolbar loaded with symbols and intervals

Each symbol will display with the same studies. When you add securities to your chart for use with the Sym/Inv toolbar make sure that you want to follow all of those securities with the same indicators (moving averages, RSI, and other indicators). This is because each symbol will be shown with the same indicators This is unlike clicking on symbols in quote sheets to activate a chart where the program will remember certain settings pertaining to individual securities. By default the Sym/Inv tab symbols do not remember distinct settings like notes, trend lines, rays, regression lines, and retracement studies. However, there is a way to get them to do that.

More Chart Sym/Inv Magic

If we stopped here with the chart toolbar you would probably think we did a great job. But could we take it even further? Well think about the way the Sym/Inv tabs work when you change symbols or intervals. Any colors that make up the background of the chart, any studies that you have added to the chart, and any Plugins that you add, appear on every chart when you change symbols. You see whatever you have set for the chart preferences are global to the symbols and intervals in the tab bar. Its as if they all share the same preferences. What if you could give each symbol or interval the ability to save its own styles? That would mean each tab, either Symbol or Interval, would contain its own background colors, studies, and so on. Well you can do that by simply right clicking on the chart Sym/Inv toolbar and selecting properties. The following dialog will come up.

Figure 10B The Symbol/Interval Tab Bar Properties dialog

The Preferences show that you can control how styles are "remembered" by the tabs in the toolbar. You can select one of three options:

Remember Styles based on Interval. This means that the Interval tabs will store distinct styles for the chart.
Remember Styles based on Symbol. This means that the Symbol tabs will store distinct styles for the chart.
Don't Remember Styles. This means that the Symbol and Interval tabs work as would be expected and the style is global to all the tabs on the chart.

The check box Remember Line Tools across style sheets controls whether or not lines drawn on a particular style will be remembered to the next Symbol or Interval tab is clicked.

Examples of Interval Styles Remembered

In the three charts below you can see what happened when we selected Remember Styles based on Interval. First for the 1 minute tab below we set up a 50 MA Color Study with a white background.

Figure 10C The Symbol/Interval Tab Bar showing a 1 Minutes tab

Next in the chart below we set up the 5-minute tab to show a 50 bar moving average study and made the background light blue.

Figure 10D The Symbol/Interval Tab Bar showing a 5 Minutes tab

Finally in the chart below we set up the 13-minute tab to show 20 bar Bollinger Bands study on a light green background.

Figure 10D The Symbol/Interval Tab Bar showing a 13 Minutes tab

Now each time we click on an Interval tab in the chart, the style will change to whatever settings we assigned to this Interval on this chart. This means that all studies and plugins can be assigned to any interval and it will only show in that interval. To change back to having the styles be global right click on the tabbed toolbar, select Properties, and select Don't Remember Styles.

All of what we just did can equally be applied to the Symbol bars. That way you can assign specific styles to specific companies.

Axis and Grids, Color Groups, Format

The figure below shows the Axis and Grid submenu.

Figure 11 The Axis and Grid submenu

The Session menu item controls whether or not the Session is on or off. The first section starting with "Session" controls which of the chart grids you want to display. The X and Y grids may be turned on and off with Major X and Major Y menu items. There is a second set of axis in between the major X and Y grids, called the Minor grid. These can be turned on and off with the Minor X&Y item.

There are times when you want your charts to take up all the room they can, or when you don’t care about the height of a chart or the time element. In those cases you can turn off the X and Y axis labels with the last two of items on this menu.

Color Groups

Color Groups is another way to control the Symbol and Interval dropdown menus on the charts. These are covered in detail in Chapter 3 Starting at the Beginning: The Famous Sym/Inv Buttons.

Format

Controls whether or not the chart displays leading zeros.

How Do I Look: Chart Preferences

One thing you will need to do often is change the chart preferences. These preferences control the color of the chart elements. Each element has a standard color dropdown palette, like the ones described in Chapter 5 Quote the Erlanger, and you can make new colors using the Palette tab in Tools->App Preferences. See those chapters for details on the Palette and how it works.

When you select Chart Preferences you get the dialog shown below. Lets focus on the Primary Chart tab to which it defaults. Here we can change the Chart Type, but mainly we can change the chart background color. In this example the background color was changed to pale blue. We can control the color of the chart Grid (the dotted line on the chart). We can control the Text Color of the chart axis lines, as well as numbers and text that are displayed along chart axis. The Filtered Prices color can be set in this box along with the Cursor color and Cursor Thickness.

You can also set the color of the candle and bar chart up and down colors (the defaults are blue and red for bars and white and red for candles. Line color for line charts is defined here as is the Neutral Color that is used when Breakout mode is turned on. You can also control the Font of the chart along with the color of the Line chart, and you can decide you want to Paint Studies on top of the price chart. That’s all there is in this Primary tab. We will get to the other tabs when we look at Overlays charts next.

Figure 12 Chart Preferences

Overlays: Secondary and Tertiary Charts

Right click on the chart and select Overlay Symbols. This will bring up the dialog box shown in the figure below. This dialog box is designed to let you set up the first and second overlay charts, called Secondary and Tertiary.

The Overlay dialog is where you "associate" a second or third symbol to be plotted on your primary chart. The box holds the state of ALL the charts in your workspace that has been assigned an overlay. That way as you select different stocks to view, the overlay associated with that stock will shift as well to display its respective overlay chart. The figure below shows four stocks and four secondary stocks associated with them.

You may also create a "default" overlay that will show on ALL charts instead of just the one with which it was associated. The way you use the box is to first create a new chart, and select what symbol you wish to display. We started with AOL. Next, right click on the chart and select Overlay Symbols. The dialog box below should display the name of the symbol NYSE:AOL in the Symbol: field. Now enter YHOO in the Secondary field and press the Add button. This will insert NYSE:AOL in the Symbol column and the symbol YHOO in the Secondary column. You can now insert another stock in the list if you wish. You can also add a third stock for an overlay to any of the primary stocks by entering its name in the Tertiary field. Symbols for various futures indexes work real well here.

Figure 13 Overlay Symbols Dialog box

When you click the OK button you should see your chart appear like the figure below. Note we have turned off the cursor window so the chart is easier to read. Notice there is no secondary YHOO stock showing on the AOL chart. Whats up?

Figure 14 The chart before turning on the secondary overlay

Turn on the Secondary and Tertiary Chart

In order to see the secondary and tertiary overlays you need to enable them from the chart toolbar. To turn on the secondary chart click the +2 button and to turn on the tertiary chart use the +3 button. We don't have a tertiary chart defined yet but we will. Now that you have clicked on the +2 button you should see the chart below with AOL and the overlay of YHOO. On the right you have the AOL price axis and on the left the YHOO price axis. Under the title bar in the chart you can see the label #2: Yahoo! Inc. However the colors and fonts of your YHOO overlay chart and the price label may not agree with the figure.

Figure 15 The secondary overlay is Yahoo (YHOO)

You can change the overlay colors by selecting the Overlay Symbols dialog and click on the Secondary chart tab.

Secondary Chart Preferences

The Secondary Chart preferences allows you to choose the type of overlay chart, the width of the bar, the color of the OHLC Bars, the up and down colors forCandle Sticks, the Line color, and the Line Title color. In our example we changed the Line Color and Title Color to blue. There is also a set of push buttons for controlling where the axis of the secondary symbol will be displayed, on the left (default), the right, or merged with the right axis. The Tertiary Chart tab has the same settings.

Figure 16 The Overlay Symbols preferences

Earlier we said it was possible to add a "default" overlay chart that would appear on all charts. Let’s make this the Tertiary overlay. Frequently we want to know how our stock compares to the NASDAQ. We can easily make that our overlay by entering COMPX into the Tertiary field in the Default area of the Overlay dialog (see figure 13). Then click the Save Defaults button. Now with the same AOL chart showing as before click on the +3 Tertiary button on the chart toolbar. The figure below shows how this should look. Note how the Tertiary chart is in red in this example. Your chart may not have the same colors, but you can change them by clicking on the Tertiary tab of the Overlay Symbols dialog box.

Figure 17 The Tertiary Overlay is the NASDAQ in this chart (COMPX)

If you wish to see both the secondary and tertiary overlay at the same time you can turn on the +2 and the +3 chart overlay icons. You can see an example of this in the figure below. The chart is starting to get cluttered and hard to read.

Figure 18 The Tertiary and the Secondary chart Overlay at the same time

In the figure below we switched the same chart to a 5-minute interval so that you can see how AOL is following the DOW (blue) and the NASDAQ (red).

Figure 19 The Tertiary and the Secondary chart Overlay at the same time on a 5 minute Interval

SNAPSHOT or CHART "MINI" QUOTE SHEETS

While ErlangerQuote has always offered a great number of features that are missing in QCharts, it has also been lacking one important feature that our customers told us they needed to do good trading, namely Snapshots on Charts. Okay we listened and we took them a step further than QCharts chart snapshots. Read on.

Introduction

The chart below shows a chart with the default Snapshot mini quote sheet enabled. Right clicking on the chart and selecting “Snapshot” enables the snapshot. You can also use the Chart -> Snapshot menu on the main menu toolbar. This particular snapshot example just scratches the surface of what is possible. The snapshot window, or windoid, can be moved anywhere within the chart area. It can be made to have a horizontal or vertical orientation. Figure 21 shows the snapshot oriented vertically and filled with more information.

Figure 20 Snapshots are mini quote sheets that can be placed on your charts and moved around

Figure 21 Here the snapshot has been rotated 90 degrees so it has a vertical orientation and more can be added.

The most amazing thing about the snapshot is that it is truly a mini quote sheet: ANY thing that can be put in a quote sheet can be put in a snapshot. The snapshot window can be moved over the chart by grabbing its title bar and dragging it.

In the example in Figure 22 we have flipped the snapshot so it’s vertical and added a number of quote sheet objects. The various cells of the snapshot are labeled and divided into categories. This example contains values from the traditional fields, plugins, formulas, and market profile. With careful selection the trader can set up the single chart to provide everything from fundamentals to level 2 bid ask pressure to point and figure charts ON ONE OBJECT (the chart). This means you do not have to constantly shift your eyes from quote sheet to chart.

Figure 22 Snapshots

Figure 23 shows the right click menu for the Snapshot menu. Most of its items are self explanatory. You must first insert a cell before you select an item to fill it. You can also clear or delete. Once you have entered a cell you can move it by clicking and dragging it either vertically or horizontally depending on your snapshot's orientation.

Abbreviations allow you to shorten the length of the labels, while Horizontal changes the format of the snapshot from Horizontal to Vertical.

Cell properties are the properties for the cell that the cursor is hovering over at the time its selected. Thus if your cursor is over a plugin cell and you select Cell Properties you will get the property dialog for that plugin. If you are over a formula the formula dialog will appear and so on.

Snapshot Properties are the properties for the entire snapshot window and are analogous to the properties of a quote sheet. Here you can set the color of the background and foreground colors as well as labels, fonts, etc.

The remaining items at the bottom of the menu are the various functions that can be inserted into cells of the snapshots: Studies, Plugins, and Lines. Last you will find the Edit and Remove features for deleting and editing the various studies and plugins that are attached to the chart that is right clicked on.

Figure 23 Snapshots menu

Manual Revision Wednesday, May 30, 2001