Use function GP (Line Chart) to chart the stock price of the currently selected company using a line. Various fundamental and technical indicators, news and events can be applied to the chart as well. Similarly, function GPC (Candle Chart) can be used to chart it using candles instead.
Some general chart settings for legends, grids etc. can be accessed by clicking on the gear icon on the top right side of the screen...
or from Edit in the red bar:
To change the data displayed in the chart to a different indicator, use the outlined window and change Last Px to the desired metric.
Note that there is a function called GF (Graph Fundamentals) intended for charting fundamentals and may offer better options for this. An example of this can be found in Examples section of Security Analysis.
To change the displayed time interval, use the outlined tab with pre-selected options or use amber boxes to enter the start data and the end date of the interval manually.
Clicking on the x-axis around the displayed dates and then dragging the mouse left or right, the displayed area can also be narrowed down or widened. By clicking on the chart area and moving the mouse left or right, we can move along the time.
On the other hand, to change the frequency of the data in the presented time series, click on the outlined button and the drop-down appears from which we can choose the preference.
The smaller the time frame, the more granular and detailed the chart movement. "Daily" setting means that on the chart there is only 1 point for each trading day (or one candle/bar etc.) and they are connected into the line. The first column in the drop-down that appeared represents the frequency used and the other ones relate to the time interval of the chart.
For example, if we want the chart for the last 3 months on hourly data (one point in the chart for every trading hour), we select the marked option:
Instead of choosing among the offered options, we can also choose Custom at the bottom of the drop-down and specify it according to our own needs.
To add another security to the currently open chart, find and select it from the amber box Add Data on the top right side (some peers and related indices can be also quickly found from the adjacent Related Data button).
Both stock prices are now drawn in the same chart. However, each one now has their own individual scale for the security price (y-axis) — one shown on the left side of the chart and one on the right. To change this and make comparison easier with relative performance, tick Normalize on the right-side menu that appears. The outlined double arrow can be use to open/close this menu.
Upon ticking Normalize a new amber box appears that can be used to select the method of normalization the data of used security prices. Selecting Factor (100) will set the values of both securities to 100 at the start of the displayed time interval.
We can observe below that Microsoft performed slightly better than Apple during this time, but both generated positive returns for the investors:
We can now compare both companies to a common benchmark, for example S&P500 index. We can add it to the chart in the same manner as we just did with Apple. Then under Normalize select SPX Index - Last Price as the benchmark.
This will set the benchmark's (S&P500) returns to 0. Anything below 0 means underperformance relative to the benchmark and anything above 0 means overperformance relative to the benchmark. The chart below shows that in the past 1 year, both Microsoft and Apple performed better than S&P500, Apple by approximately 2% and Microsoft by around 7.8%.
Note that data added does not to be a security, but can also be virtually any time series from the database. Not only macroeconomic data such as inflation, unemployment or GDP can be added, but things as specific as for example a certain river temperature can be plotted as well.
Deleting individual lines from the chart, changing parameters or colors is done from the same menu on the left side.
Clicking on the pencil icon opens a new window that allows us to set various display parameters for the chosen time series.
After customizing a chart, we might want to save it for future use. Select Actions -> Save As...
A new window opens where we select the name for the chart. Then click Save.
Saved charts can be accessed by using function G (My Graphs and Maps).
To compare the market performance of different assets we can use COMP (Comparative Returns).
Let us for example look at Monster Beverage Corporation and compare its market performance relative to some of its peers and equity indices. Input the desired equities in the amber box in the top-left part of the page and press <GO> to update the display.
We can see that for the period of the past 5 years, the NASDAQ 100 index performed the best of all selected equities, while Coca-Cola was the worst one.
This can be checked by choosing Settings. A new window opens in which we can change the preferences, and we can observe that Graph Type is set to Total Return.
Now, let us set the current century for the period. We do this by setting the Range (above the Security table). Changing the period to some pre-determined options can also be done from the outlined bar below the table.
From here we can see the spectacular performance of the Monster Beverages stock. The outlined section also provides some numbers for comparison. The stock has gone up 1260x since 2000, compared to for example SPX rising less than 4 times. All of the other securities displayed barely moved in the chart in comparison to Monster.
Another way to perform a quick comparison of performance between two securities, is by using the HS (Spread Analysis) function, which is briefly shown in the Comparing companies section.
