Seasonality Charts

lmkwin

On his recent StockCharts TV show, Grayson Rose talked about Seasonality Charts. It was a very good presentation but one thing he said about them isn't accurate and a common misconception.

At the bottom of the Seasonality Chart there is a slider with a number in it. It defaults to 5 but you can drag the edge of the slider to increase or decrease the number showing. The number showing is Calendar periods in years. You can also move the slider to look at different periods.

Looking at a seasonality chart today, with a default of 5, you may think you are looking at 5 years of data. You are really looking at 4 full years of data plus the current YTD for the chart.

So your January seasonality will include 5 years of data, but your March and onward is only reflecting 4 complete years. If you want to see 5 complete years, you need to show 6 on the Seasonality slider.

Otherwise, it was a very good presentation on, what I consider, a valuable resource on StockCharts.com

lmkwin

In a recent blog posting, one of StockCharts authors talks about the Seasonality chart for XLV but he fell into the same misconception of what the chart settings mean.

He shows the XLV seasonality chart and says that it is a 10 year period. There is a 10 in the slider bar at the bottom of the chart. If you look at the YEARS showing in the top of the chart, you'll see 2024 is one of the 10 years showing.

So this chart is actually 9 years of seasonality plus a portion of 1 month in 2024. That's not 10 years.

To really see 10 years you would need to move the slider bar to the left to make 2024 disappear and 2014 appear.

It's a common mistake that can significantly alter the analysis



Moving the slider over




I'd also like to mention that there are alternate views of the seasonality. On the left of the slider bar there are two other buttons to click on to see the seasonality in line chart formats. The 1st button is a "Separate" display which will display the yearly line charts, most recent on top down to oldest. If you show the current year, that is displayed on top in Red.



If you click on the Middle button, it will display all of the years in a performance type view. The coloring remains the same with the current year in Red. Look at how that Red and the Orange year (2017) line up.



Seasonality charts can be extremely helpful to look at. I prefer the middle button to look at how things look, particularly after good or bad years as well as seeing how the current year looks, in shape, compared to other years. XLV off to a strong start. What other years are like it? How does a strong start translate to the year.
That sort of thing.

https://stockcharts.com/articles/dont_ignore_this_chart/2024/01/xlvs-record-rally-the-mustknow-352.html

lmkwin

And just an FYI, those Year boxes showing at the top of the chart are actually buttons. If you click on them it will gray out that year and remove it from showing in the display and the seasonality calculations. To see that year again, click on it and it is no longer grayed out.

I use this to see what a bullish period seasonality looks like vs a bearish period for example.

Another FYI, the slider only extends out (click and drag the left side of the slider) to 20. If the stock has more than 20 years of data, you will need to move the slider to the left, by clicking on the left arrow of the slider bar or clicking on the slider bar and dragging it left, to see older periods.

nmull1972

is there a way to keep the time frame the same?
If you are in ChartList view and change it to 10 years, when you scroll with the arrow to next chart it reverts back to 5.
I just want to keep hitting the arrow. It's kind of a pain to adjust the slider.
2020 really screws up April. Some stocks doubled that month that month.

lmkwin

I agree that it would be nice if it kept the setting from chart to chart instead of defaulting the view. Or if there were a way to create a "default" Seasonality chart period. I don't know of a way to do that. Maybe you can make a suggestion to Support outlining the goals and benefits to StockCharts users. If you do, copy the suggestion before you submit it, then submit it. On this forum there is a thread named Suggestions to StockCharts. You can paste your suggestion there, for others to read, and possibly make their own suggestion along those lines.

On a separate note, you can 'exclude' 2020 by clicking on the 2020 button at the top of the chart and it will display the seasonality excluding the unusually volatile period. But, again, it will default back to being active when you move to the next seasonality chart

nmull1972

Thanks for that tip.
I submitted a question to them and posted it under Suggestions to StockCharts on here.

nmull1972

response

Jack replied
Mar 30, 7:50pm
Hi Neil,

Thank you for contacting us about setting the time frame for seasonality view for scrolling through a ChartList.

We welcome your ideas for improving our website and are always glad to hear from our customers about ways we can make things better.

Every suggestion helps us understand our clients better and ultimately helps us improve our products for you.

To ensure quality and stability, we carefully determine how and when we introduce change to the products. This means that suggestions are typically addressed when we focus on a specific feature in a release. During this process, we revisit suggestions and consider them for inclusion in the release.

We sincerely appreciate your input!


Thank you,