Printing out a chart

wonton_soup

Is there a way to print a chart out over a number of page instead of just all on one page. So if I look at the $spx chart since 1925 I might want to see that spread out over 20 pages I then tape together... is there a way to print this out in this manner...

wonton

markd

There's no built-in way to do it that I'm aware of.

It's also pretty difficult to do by dividing it up into 1 year or 5 year or 10 year sections, because the price scale for each time period would be different (different number of points in the same vertical distance), so when you tape them together, it's not really an accurate picture.

On the other hand, a chart is an image that you can download, so if you know someone with sophisticated graphics software, you might give them the image and see what they can do.

gord

There is a way if you are willing to spend 1/2 an hour creating the 20 or so charts in a special way.

I agree with Markd printing 20 / 5yr charts won't work well as the price changes so does the scale, so when taping them together they won't line up.

The image method printed by a graphics company won't work well either as there is just not enough pixel density when you blow it up and stretch it out. Here's just a 5 yr section from the historical chart section off the StockCharts web site. Note the distortion and lack of density.



With my method you will need to create say multiple 5 yr charts and use a forced scaling trick I use quite often. The method is to use the "Price Same Scale" function to add another symbol. In this case it is a custom index which can be created on the "User Defined Index Workbench"

So for the $SPX from 1925 to present I picked a scale from 1 to 2500 and entered two data points into my custom index a month apart and within the data range of the 5yr chart section. Here's the data points for the period from 1980 - 1985.



Note when entering the data its only necessary to enter a date and the close, (open, high, low) will be filled in the same as the close when you hit "Add Data".

So here's the chart section from 1980 - 1985.



http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$SPX&p=M&st=1980-01-01&en=1985-01-01&id=p65231840473&a=399417699

Hope this gives you some other ideas.

cheers Gord

markd

A worthwhile alternative to try! I meant to add to my post that someone was likely to come up with creative ideas - and you did once again.

But with the image - I tried expanding the chart Size option to 2500, and plugged in 1900 for a start date for $INDU, with the default chart style and a monthly time frame. It looked pretty good. But I guess it depends how much detail you want to see.

For my own research, I've used weekly 1 year charts, overlapping by 6 months, so chart 1 is say 1/1990 - 12/1990, chart 2 is 6/1990 - 6/1991, chart 3 is 1/1991 - 12/1991, etc. You can do the same for daily charts, but 6 months overlapping by 3 months. I suppose you could do 5 year monthly charts with 2 1/2 year overlaps if you wanted.

The overlap give you a way to follow the market before and after a setup without going off the chart too often. Just an idea.