Hello Fellow ChartWatchers!
Stocks rose this past week with the large-, mid-, and small-cap S&P indexes all finishing up around 3.2%. For the year, the S&P 500 is up over 12%, the mid-caps are up 7.98% and the small-caps are up only 3%; however those numbers are misleading because, over the past 3 months we've see a surge in strength from the small caps. Since October 1st, small-cap stocks have outperformed mid-cap stocks by 2.2% and large-cap stocks by 3.0%. And, as Arthur Hill pointed out in yesterday's Market Message articles (which members can see here), micro-cap stocks (IWC) are currently leading things higher.
Arthur, John, Greg, Carl, and Tom will talk more about that in just a minute, but I wanted to take a minute to make sure everyone is aware of all the things we added (without raising prices) to StockCharts.com this year.
Why a StockCharts.com Membership is More Valuable Now Than It Has Ever Been
At StockCharts.com, our strategy is to continually increase the value of the website without increasing prices. That's how we remain competitive in the cut-throat world of the Internet. It's how we reward our loyal fan-base. Essentially, it is what we do. 2014 was no exception. In fact, we've added more content to our website in 2014 than in any previous year; something I'm very proud of. Here's a list of just some of the great things we added in 2014:
- Webinars! - Our two experimental webinar series have been HUGE successes. Have you attended one yet? So far, Arthur Hill is giving live webinars on Tuesdays at 1pm Eastern and Greg Schnell is doing his live webinar on Thursdays at 4:30pm Eastern. Hundreds of people have attended so far and the feedback from them has been incredibly positive. We plan on continuing these programs into 2015 and plan on expanding our webinar line up so that other authors and commentators can get involved too. Interested? Why not click here to register for Arthur's next webinar on this coming Tuesday?
- Martin Pring's Commentary - I still can't believe that Martin joined our commentary team this year. For no additional cost, members can now read (and hear) Martin's expert commentary in his "Market Roundup" blog and as a frequent guest during Thursday's "Market Roundup" webinars with Greg Schnell.
- Martin Pring's Market Indicators - Martin also brought with him his coveted collection of market indicators including the Pring Special K, the Pring Deflation Index, and the various Pring Diffusion indicators. To see a list of Martin's indexes, search for symbols starting with "!PR". For more information on how to use them, search ChartSchool for "Pring" (or just click here). And read Martin's blog for examples of how he uses them.
- Greg Morris - Greg is now in the process of updating his Market Breadth Indicators book using his new blog on our website. Anyone can now read Greg's updates for free. In addition, as part of updating Greg's book, we've added a large number of new breadth-based Market Indicators to our system.
- RRG Charts - These new charts are amazing and you can only find them live on the Internet here at StockCharts.com. Created by Julius de Kempenaer - who is also blogging about them exclusively on our site as well - RRG charts dynamically show you relative strength for any group of stocks/ETFs/indexes that you want. If you haven't seen them in action yet, check out this article from Arthur Hill and see how useful they can be.
- DecisionPoint Chart Gallery - Our merger with DecisionPoint.com was one of the highlights of 2014. As part of that merger, we created the DP Chart Gallery to give everyone easy access to the best charts that DecisionPoint had to offer - their "Greatest Hits" as it were.
- All the DecisionPoint Market Indicators - Over 400 additional indicators were added to our website as a part of our merger with DecisionPoint. We are still in the process of documenting them all!
- Carl & Erin's Free DecisionPoint Blog - As soon as the merger was announced, Carl and Erin began blogging on our website in the "DecisionPoint" blog. It's a great source of ideas for how best to use all of the new content that they brought to our site.
- DecisionPoint Reports, Trackers, and Spreadsheets - Did you know that each day StockCharts members can access more than 20 high-quality, expert-level reports about the technical condition of the stock market? These reports (and the corresponding spreadsheets) show you ALL of the important market timing signals and changes that DecsionPoint has used for over 20 years. They are a huge "hidden gem" on our website that all members should check out. They can be found in the DP Reports Blog and the DP Trackers Blog.
- John Murphy's First eBook - We purchased the rights to John's classic book "Charting Made Easy" and immediately re-released it on our website for free. Yep, free. Now anyone can read John's great introduction to chart analysis just by visiting this link.
- SCU Seminars - We presented live StockCharts University training seminars in 5 different locations to over 600 attendees.
- ChartCon 2014 - In August, we hosted over 400 people for our ChartCon 2014 conference. It was a terrific event with presentations over 2 days from experts like John Murphy, Martin Pring, Richard Arms, Alexander Elder, Arthur Hill, Gatis Roze, Tom Bowley and many others. The reviews from attendees were amazingly wonderful.
- ChartCon 2014 Videos - Couldn't make it to ChartCon? No worries - we videotaped it for you! You can order the ChartCon videos from our online store.
- Pinnacle Breadth and Commodities Data - In October, we completed a deal with Pinnacle Data that allows us to use their amazing historical database of market breadth data and commodities data on our charts. All at no additional cost to you. No need to thank us. Just keep enjoying the best charting database available anywhere.
- Top Advisors Corner - Another "hidden gem" that we got in the DecisionPoint merger is the "Top Advisors Corner" blog that features free articles from subscription-based newsletter authors. For the price of a small sales pitch, you can now read even more technical content from even more great technical analysts.
- Greatly Improved Documentation - We've been rewriting all of our documentation. You can find the new version by clicking the "Help" link in the upper right corner of any of our pages. Very soon now, the old "Support" area will be disappearing in favor of this new documentation.
- Corporate Action Event Markers - Use the "Events" overlay on our SharpCharts to see when splits/dividends/distributions have affected the stock's price. Here's an example.
- "Difference" Symbols - Use a hyphen to subtract one symbol from another and chart the result. Here's an example.
- The "Ranger" Interactive Date Control - Interactively change the start and end dates for your chart by simply clicking and dragging.
- Expanded SCTR Coverage - we now rank over 5,000 different stocks and ETFs using our exclusive SCTR Ranking system.
- RANK BY Scans - These things are awesome. Members can now designate how they want their scan results to be sorted on the results page by adding a "RANK BY" clause to the end of their scan. This has the added benefit of giving you indicator values on the scan results page.
- Solid Candlestick Colors - Those of you that prefer candlesticks with different colors for up vs. down, your wish is our command.
- The New StockCharts Answer Network (s.c.a.n.) - In June we released a completely new version of our user-to-user help area called "The StockCharts Answer Network (s.c.a.n.)" Be sure to check out the results and register to participate if you have a question or you think you can help others.
- And there's more... Gatis Roze's amazing ChartPack updates, Greg Schnell's huge volume of great commentary, John Murphy's amazing October market warning, our charts in Alexander Elder's new book, our 15 year anniversary celebration, 5 new ChartPacks from DecisionPoint, sortable CandleGlance charts, over 11,000 Facebook followers...
- ...and much, much, much, much more!
Hopefully, you've been able to take advantage of many of the things we offer already. If not, I urge you to take some time over the holidays and explore some of these new features of our site. Hopefully you will agree that StockCharts.com offers an amazing amount of value in return for your subscription.
Speaking of subscriptions, our Holiday Special will be ending soon. If you are not a member, join now. If your account ends within the next 6 months, you should definitely renew your account now and take advantage of our long-term pricing deals. 14 months of service for the price of 12 is our most popular offer. If you wait to renew, you may miss out on those savings.
Happy Holidays everyone!
- Chip
