Favorite Chart Style for Printing?

jonbialis

Hi All,

I'm experimenting to find the best chart style to print out in black and white. Can anyone share ones they have found especially helpful for this? I typically use OHLC or line charts for my weekly/monthly charts.

Thanks!!

Jon

markd

I think it's really a matter of personal preference. It's certainly less expensive to print black and white, and if you have just a couple of indicators and/or overlays, and you keep your look back periods fairly short so the bars are fairly large and clear, it can work well. You probably want a plain background, and grid set to "normal" - not dense or dark.

As far as convenience, the "landscape" chart size option automatically sizes the chart for 8 1/2 x 11 paper, so you don't have to mess with any settings (except maybe to change your default orientation in your printer setting dialog box, if it has one). You might be able to fool around with custom sizes to get something a little larger.

If you don't necessarily want to print, but want to save a chart, you can copy and paste it to a presentation package like PowerPoint.

My personal preference for bar styles is candlestick, but nothing wrong with OHLC. I overlay some of my indicators to put different look back periods in the same space (e.g. Fast K 21, 63 and 251), and I like to see up/down volume clearly, so when I print (not that often) I like to use color. Much more information in the same space (and, you can color co-ordinate indicators - so for instance, Price Channel 21, Fast K 21 and the 21 ema are red, K63 and ema 63 are green, etc.

Another tool I use, that doesn't require color, is extra bars at the end of the chart. That allows you to extend trend lines or fib lines or price channels (with the annotation tool, or by hand on the printed page). The intersections suggest possible entry points. It gives you a shorter look back period for the same bar size, but that's a trade off you can work out if you like the idea.

jonbialis

Thanks!

I really appreciate the suggestions - I am going to definitely use landscape, extra bars and like the PPT idea as well.

jonbialis

Hi Mark - another thought on this. I like your PowerPoint idea so I copied charts one by one to Google Slides. I then used the "negative" function there because my charts use the night theme on StockCharts which would make printing use a lot of black ink!

Anyway - I'm trying to figure out a way to create a macro in Google Sheets so that it's easier for me if I want to review charts on a weekly basis and don't have to edit each image in sheets.

Thanks again!

markd

Great! Can't help you with the macro, but it's a good idea.