Creating new charts

To create a new custom chart, you can either start with a 'blank slate' (price chart only) or use any of the default Stockworm charts. To start with a price chart only, click on the 'create new chart' quick link on the charting page. To start with a default Stockworm chart, click on the appropriate link in the 'stockworm charts' table on the charts page.

Instructions for customizing every aspect of your new chart are given below. Note that if you change the chart size or one of the chart types, the charts will update themselves automatically. If you change any other setting, you need to remember to press the 'update' to the right of the chart settings form to get the page to update.

Timeframe selection

The timeframe selection governs the span of time over which the chart is plotted. Several settings are available within this chart options category, including:

• the frequency setting governs the sampling frequency used for the price volume and technical charts. For example, 'weekly' charts use weekly open, close, high, and low prices and weekly volume for all charts and technicals. Technical analysis parameters will be interpreted in the 'frequency' units (e.g. 8-14 moving average is 8 day, 14 day for daily charts, 8 week, 14 week for weekly).
• the from setting establishes the starting date for the chart
• the to setting determines the ending date for the chart.
• a set of saved chart settings can be viewed on a different date. If the timeframe is saved as sliding date, this means that if, for example, you selected 6 months ago for the 'from' option, then the starting date for the chart is always 6 months ago from the date that you are viewing the chart. The fixed date option, on the other hand, will display a chart starting 6 months from the date the chart was saved.

Once you have changed the 'from' or 'to' timeframe settings, hit 'update' to see the results of your changes.

Chart scale

The chart scale settings allow you to increase the size of the charts to better view them. You can independently adjust the width and height according to your preference. The width and height scaling factors are presented a percentage of the original plot size so, for example, changing the width setting to 200% will result in a chart which is twice as wide as the original chart width.

Buy/sell trading signals

The charts page will be automatically reloaded with the new size immediately after a change is made.

The buy/sell signals selection allows you to select a basis for drawing trading signals on your chart:

Upward green arrows represent buy signals on your chart, while downward red arrows represent sell signals. The list of available techniques is populated based upon all of the user and Stockworm defined trading signals which have been created (see the trading signals section of the manual for more details). The 'jump to' icon to the right of the selection allows you to view the technical signal rules for the currently selected technical signal.

Once you have changed your buy/sell signal, hit 'update' to see the results of your changes. When you do have signals applied to your chart, the signal performance will be shown at the bottom of the chart:

For each signal line which is shown on the chart, an outcome will be listed as profitable (price gain for long, price loss for short), unprofitable (price loss for long, price gain for short), or neutral (no price change). In addition, overall percent gains are shown for (1) buying at the beginning of the chart and holding through the end of the charting period and (2) swing trading (buying when signal is buy and shorting when signal is sell). For the swing trading gain the initial position is based upon the signal status when the chart begins (e.g. if a sell signal occurred before the charting period, then the initial position would be short).

Chart types

The chart type selector which is available next to each of the 5 chart slots in the settings area allows you to change the type of plot, add a plot (if the current plot type is 'empty') or remove a plot (change the plot type to 'empty'). To change a chart type, simply choose a new chart type from the available selections and the charts page will be automatically refreshed with the new chart and options for the new chart. The sections below provide more details on each chart type.

Price charts

The price chart is displayed using a user-selected plot style:

• The ohlc style (open, high, low, close) is constructed with the top and bottom of each bar representing the daily high and low prices, respectively, the left hand tick representing the opening price, and the right hand tick representing the closing price.
• The candlestick style shows a line from the high to the greater of the open or closing price, a line from the low to the lesser of the opening and closing price, and a rectangle between the opening and closing prices which is filled on days where the close is lower than the open and not filled otherwise (or filled/not filled on down/up weeks/months/etc. for other chart frequencies).
• The line style is a simple line plot of the closing price.

Valuation overlays are used to overlay a line for a stock value model over the price line. This will give you a feel for the historical relationship between a given value model and the price curve.

Several technical overlays, including bollinger bands, price envelopes, the linear regression indicator, the linear regression line, moving averages, and the parabolic sar, are provided for the price plots. To add an overlay, select the desired overlay from one of the two technical overlay selections, select the required parameters (either from the parameters selection or a 'custom' selection), and hit the update button to replot the chart.

The technical indicators section of the manual covers each technical indicator in greater detail.

You can also choose to overlay a market indicator (Dow Jones, S&P500, Nasdaq) and/or up to 5 stock symbols (type in the symbols separated by spaces). Press 'update' to see the effect of your changes.

Volume charts

Volume charts display the trading volume over time, in thousands of shares. The volume charts are colored so that up days (stock price increases) are displayed in green while down days are displayed in red (weekly volume charts are colored for up/down weeks, same for monthly and other frequencies). There are no settings for the volume chart.

Technical charts

Stockworm supports a wide variety of technical indicators from the Accumulation-Distribution indicator through Williams %R. To use a different technical indicator, simply select the indicator from the pulldown list and hit 'Update'. If you would like to change the settings for an indicator, either select a different set of parameters from the pulldown list or type in different parameters in the text field and then hit 'Update'.

The number of input fields will change depending on the technical indicator. For example, MACD (shown above) takes three input parameters: a time period (days/weeks/months, depending on chart frequency) for the slow moving average, and time period for the fast moving average, and a time period for the signal line. On balance volume (OBV), on the other hand, doesn't take any input parameters (OBV represents a cumulative sum of volume on up versus down days).

If you are typing in your own parameters for the technical indicators, make sure to fill in all required input fields with values greater than zero. Otherwise you may encounter an error.

The technical indicators section of the manual covers each technical indicator in greater detail

Saving custom charts

Once you have a set of chart settings that you would like to revisit with another stock, you should save these chart settings. The left hand side of the charting page always displays a 'this chart' table. If you are customizing your charts from a new chart or default Stockworm chart, then the only menu item which will be available is "save as" because you cannot overwrite default chart views. Other chart views will offer you the "save", "save as", "rename", and "delete" options so that you can modify previously saved charts.

After you have saved a chart, it will appear on the left hand side of the screen in the 'my charts' section.