How many times have you loaded a software package or signed up for a Web service only to find that just getting started was time consuming and frustrating? This tutorial promises to ease your mind and give you quick and easy details about the basic features of your StockCharts.com membership.

We recommend that you print this tutorial out and follow along with the step-by-step instructions while you sit at your computer. It won't take long. If you spend 15 minutes working through the examples in this booklet, your StockCharts experience is sure to be refreshing, exciting and rewarding.

If, after reading this booklet and following the step-by-step examples, you still do not feel comfortable using the basic features of the site, please E-mail us at: support@stockcharts.com. We truly appreciate your business and welcome your feedback.

Before we get started, it's important to note that StockCharts.com has two levels of charting services - our "Basic" service and and our "Extra!" service. The features of your membership will vary depending on which level of service you signed up for. Be sure to note which type of membership you have and follow the appropriate instructions as you work through this tutorial. If you have questions about the differences between the two levels of service, check out our service comparison page.

The first thing you'll need to do is log in to your StockCharts account.

1. Open your internet browser and go to: http://stockcharts.com
2. In the upper left corner, just below the logo, you will see the Member Login panel with two white text entry boxes - one for ID and one for Password (P/W). Your ID is your E-mail address and your password was sent to you when you signed up.
3. Enter your ID and Password, making sure you have typed them correctly, and click on the small box that says "Log Me In Automatically Next Time" (this is optional, but recommended - see the note below.) Then click the LOG IN button.
4. If this is the first time you have logged in to your account, you will be presented with our Membership Agreement. Please read it and click on "I Accept" at the bottom.
5. The next screen you see will be your Members home page. It will say, "Welcome to Basic (or Extra!), Your Name" at the top. This means you have successfully logged in!

On the right side of your Members home page you'll see a box with the title "Your Membership." In this box, you'll see the date you signed up, the date your account expires, and the number of days remaining in your membership.

1. Click on the link Your Account Settings.
2. On this page you can change your E-mail address or password, subscribe or unsubscribe to the newsletter, and much more. Check your settings now to make sure they are to your liking.
3. If you'd like to change a setting, click the Edit button.
4. Click Submit to make the changes or Cancel if you don't want the changes to be made.

You'll return to the main Account Settings page and see that your account has been updated. Note that you can also extend or upgrade your subscription from this page, for future reference.

On the StockCharts.com Home page, just below the LOG IN button in the upper left corner, you'll see a "Forgot Your Password?" link. To retrieve your password, follow these instructions:

1. Click on the "Forgot Your Password?" link.
2. Enter your E-mail address. (Note that it must be the E-mail address you currently have registered in your Account Settings.)
3. Click Send Password.

Your password will be sent to you via the E-mail address you have entered.

Both Internet Explorer and Netscape allow you to create a list of shortcuts - called "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" - to Web sites you visit frequently. The following instructions will help you to add your StockCharts Members home page to your list.

If you use Internet Explorer as your browser…

1. Across the top of your Internet Explorer browser window is a horizontal menu with File, Edit, View, Favorites and Tools on it. Click on Favorites.
2. A dropdown menu appears. The top item is Add to Favorites. Click this.
3. A window opens and lets you type a name or accept the default name for the page: "StockCharts.com - Members Page." Accept the default name by clicking OK.

Now whenever you open your browser, you can find "StockCharts.com - Members Page" in your Favorites list! It's an easy shortcut to get to the site.

If you use Netscape Navigator as your browser…

1. At the top of your Netscape Navigator browser window is a horizontal menu with File, Edit, View, Search, Go, Bookmarks, Tasks and Help on it. Click on Bookmarks.
2. A dropdown menu appears. The top item is Add Bookmarks. Click this.

Now whenever you open your browser, you'll see "StockCharts.com - Members Page" in your Bookmarks list. It's an easy shortcut to get to the site.

If you are using StockCharts.com on your home computer, you will rarely (if ever) need to log out. To end a session, you'll simply close your browser window. If you are using a public computer, however, it is important that you log out to end your session. You can log out in one simple step:

1. On the right side of your Members home page, in the blue "My Membership" box, click on the line "Want to Log Out?"

This will log you out completely. Note that you will need to enter your User ID and password the next time you visit the site.

Starting from your Members home page, we are going to bring up a chart and make some changes to it. (Remember - the Members home page is the one that says "Welcome to Basic (or Extra!), Your Name" at the top. You get there by clicking the Members tab on the top navigation bar.)

In the top right corner of all StockCharts pages you'll see two key items. The first is a dropdown menu listing our different charting tools and a box where you can enter a ticker symbol to quickly create a chart. We'll talk more about that tool in a minute. Right below the ticker symbol box, you'll see the link to our Symbol Catalog.

The Drill-Down Method allows you to search for a ticker symbol alphabetically, using the title of the company, index or mutual fund for which you'd like to create a chart.

1. Click on the Symbol Catalog link. You'll see a page that lets you "drill down" to find any company, index or mutual fund by clicking on the first letter of its title. Drilling down is helpful since we have over 20,000 entries in North American stocks alone! It allows us narrow the list of available tickers to a smaller, more usable list.
2. Let's find the symbol for Coca Cola. Click on the letter "C." You will see that we can now refine our search further by drilling down to the second letter.
3. Click on "Co." The next page shows all stocks that have a name beginning with "Co." Coca Cola is near the top of the list - scroll down to it.

You can see that the symbol for Coca Cola is "KO." (Note that some symbols begin with letters that are different than the corresponding name. This is why the Drill Down Method is so helpful!) The Exchange is listed at the far right - you can see that the company is listed on the NYSE. The three small icons on the left are quick links to different styles of charts you can create for Coca Cola's stock performance. From left to right they are: Bar (SharpChart), Gallery View, and Point & Figure. These links will take you directly to a chart for "KO."

In the upper right corner of any page of the Symbol Catalog, you'll find a "Catalog Search" box. We're going to search for Coca Cola again using this handy tool.

1. Type "Coca" in the text entry box and click Go.

The list that is returned has all of the companies with "Coca" in their title. A word of caution - be as specific as possible when using the catalog search. If you had just typed "Co," the search engine would return a list of every company with the letter combination "Co" in its name. You can imagine the size of that list! The best way to get a qualified list is to enter as much of a company's name as you can. This will narrow down your search much more quickly and efficiently.

In the upper right corner of every StockCharts page, you'll see a dropdown menu containing different types of charting tools and a box to the right where you can enter a ticker symbol.(Note that this tool is the quickest way to get a chart on the screen. You'll use it often.) The dropdown menu is defaulted to SharpCharts, our primary bar and candlestick charting tool. This is the tool we'll use in all of these exercises.

1. Type "KO" (for Coca Cola) in the ticker box and click the Go button.
2. The default chart for Coca Cola is quickly displayed on your screen. It should look like the following:
   

Note that the default chart uses candlesticks to display the price data. If you are using this tool while the market is open, you'll see that the last bar is yellow (or green if you are a Real Time subscriber) - this means that the price information is still in flux. There are two moving averages overlaid on the chart - 50- and 200-day - along with volume bars displayed behind and at the bottom of the price plot. Above the price plot is an indicator called RSI and below the price plot is another indicator called MACD. (Don't worry about what these indicators mean for now, if you don't already know.)

Immediately below the chart are all the controls and settings you'll use to make the chart look the way you want. NOTE: You may need to scroll down in your browser window to see these tools. We won't cover ALL the ways you can control your chart, but we will cover a few of the more important ones. You can learn more about the others by experimenting and reading about them in our Chart School.

"Dropdown boxes" are the fields where you click on an arrow and a menu of options "drop down." An example of a dropdown box follows:

You'll see lots of dropdown boxes used throughout StockCharts.com. They are handy because they allow us to a) show the current settings, and b) provide easy access to more settings without using up additional screen space. Clicking on the small, downward-pointing arrow on the right side of a dropdown box lets you see all the options that are available. If the list of options is long, there may also be a scroll bar along the right side of the list.

The appearance of the chart can be controlled using the Chart Attributes section, which is just under the chart.

Looking at the current settings in the dropdown boxes tells us that the charting period of this chart is Daily and the period is Fill the Chart, the chart style is Candlesticks, the chart size is 460, and the volume bars are set to Overlay. In addition, we are using Colored Prices for the candlesticks, Colored Volume, Log Scale, Show Legends, and Line Smoothing, and the color scheme is Default.

Now we're going to change a few of the attributes.

1. Click on the Type dropdown arrow (it's the box that's currently set to Candlesticks).
2. Scroll down to OHLC Bars. When it is selected, release your mouse. OHLC - which stands for Open, High, Low, Close - is a standard charting format, also called a "Bar Chart."
3. Note that, even though you see OHLC Bars selected under Type, nothing has changed on your chart. You must always click on the Update button in order for your changes to take effect. Click this button now.

We now have a chart identical to the first one, only using OHLC Bars instead of Candlesticks in the price plot. Let's do one more thing in the Chart Attributes section.

1. Click on the Color Scheme dropdown arrow.
2. Select a color scheme (Rainier is nice), then click the Update Chart button. Your chart will look similar to the one below:

The Range dropdown is at the top of the Chart Attributes section, just after Period.

Click on the Range dropdown (the default is Fill the Chart) and you'll see all the range options. You can also enter your own start and end dates with the Select Start/End option below. Note that if you are charting Intraday data, your chart's end date will always be today, regardless of any end date that you designate.

Let's change the duration of this chart.

1. Click on the Range dropdown arrow.
2. Scroll down to the Predefined Range options, 3 months, and release the mouse.
3. Click the Update button.

You'll see your chart change accordingly. Experiment with the different range options to see how they affect your chart.

Price Overlays are indicators that can be plotted directly on top of the price plot. They are usually scaled the same as the price plot. The default overlays are both Simple Moving Averages (you can see them in the first two dropdown boxes in the Overlays section, directly below the Chart Attributes section we just covered).

To the right of the dropdown boxes are text fields where you can enter parameters for each of the price overlays. For a default chart, we have 50- and 200-day Moving Averages. We know they are 50- and 200-day (as opposed to minute or hour) averages because the chart is plotted in days. You can check this by looking at the Chart Attributes. If the Periods dropdown is set to Daily, you know your moving averages are plotted in days as well.

Let's remove the 200-day Moving Average and add Bollinger Bands. (Don't worry if you don't know what Bollinger Bands are at this point. You can learn about them later in the StockCharts Chart School.)

1. Click on the dropdown arrow next to the second Simple Moving Average box (the one set for 200 days).
2. Scroll down to Bollinger Bands in the dropdown menu and release the mouse. You can see that default parameters (20 and 2) are entered in the boxes to the right of the dropdown when you select Bollinger Bands.
3. Remember - the overlay won't show up on the chart until you click the Update button. Click that button now.

Now we see Bollinger Bands (three red lines - two solid and one dotted) across the price plot. The 200-day Moving Average is no longer on the chart. In the upper left corner of the price plot you can see a list of the overlays you currently have on the chart, along with their respective parameters. This section is circled in red in the example below:

You can read more about Overlays in our SharpCharts Manual: Adding Price Overlays

Looking at your chart, you should see the RSI plotted above the price and the MACD plotted below. These are two examples of Indicator Windows. The Indicators settings are just below the Overlays settings we used in the last section.

Notice that you can designate whether you'd like your Indicator Windows to show up Above or Below your price plot, using the dropdown boxes to the left of the indicator boxes.

Let's move the RSI indicator below the price plot.

1. Click on the dropdown arrow next to where it says Above.
2. Select Below and release the mouse.
3. Click the Update button.

Now both indicators are below the price plot.

Let's add a third indicator.

1. Click on the third dropdown box arrow where - None - is currently selected.
2. Scroll up or down to Price Relative and release the mouse button. $SPX will automatically appear in the first parameter setting box. $SPX is the symbol for the S&P 500 Index. This indicator will show the relative performance of KO compared to the S&P 500. You can enter any symbol in this parameter box, but we won't change it for now.
3. Click the Update button and you'll see the Price Relative indicator below the

other indicators on your chart.

Let's remove the MACD Indicator Window.

1. Click on the dropdown arrow next to where it says MACD.
2. Scroll to the top entry, -None-, and release your mouse.
3. Click the Update button.

The MACD Indicator Window should be gone.

You can read more about Indicators in our SharpCharts Manual: Adding Technical Indicators

The "ChartNotes" annotation tool is a powerful feature of StockCharts.com and something you won't find anywhere else on the Web. To open the annotation tool, click the Annotate link directly below your chart. A new window entitled ChartNotes will open with your chart in it.

Let's try drawing a trendline on our KO chart.

1. Click on the square with the diagonal blue line in it, in the upper left corner of the toolbar. (If the square is gray, the tool is already selected.)
2. Click next to a lower data point on the price plot (try the lowest point on the chart) and drag your mouse to a higher point.
3. Release the mouse button. You'll see a trendline!
4. To move the end of the line, first click on the selection arrow tool in the top toolbar (on the far left), then click on the end of the line. A yellow "handle" will appear. You can adjust the line by dragging this handle. Experiment to see how it works.
5. To move the whole line, click in the middle of it. You'll see a yellow handle on each end and you'll be able to move the line by dragging it.

As you can see, the trendline tool is only one of many annotation options. You can draw circles and squares and add text boxes with custom comments. You can apply any of the colors you see in the left bar to your lines and shapes. For more information about this powerful tool, click the Instructions link at the bottom of the window. When you're finished annotating your chart, you can close the window by clicking on the "X" in the upper right corner.

We've just begun to touch on all of the charting options that are available to you as a StockCharts member. By making adjustments to the various settings we've discussed, you can customize your charts to look exactly how you want them. Each section of the SharpCharts tool has a link to a glossary description of that feature and an "About" link that will take you to our Chart School. Click on these links to learn more!

Once you have a chart on the screen and you like the way it looks, you may want to save it so you can return to the same chart later without having to recreate it from scratch. You may also want to save the particular settings you've used so you can easily apply them to other charts you create. The following instructions will walk you through both of these tasks.

First make sure you are happy with the settings you've applied to your chart. (The setting options can be found by scrolling down below your chart. They were discussed in the previous section of this tutorial.)

Just below your chart you'll see a dropdown box called ChartStyles. You'll see -Select- in this box if you haven't yet saved any ChartStyles. To the right of the dropdown are 5 options: Make Default, Add New, Replace, Edit Properties, and Delete.

Click Make Default. Your current settings are saved to the »Default« option in the ChartStyles list, which is now the selected ChartStyle. Whenever you come back to StockCharts.com, any new charts you make will be in this style.

You can save other ChartStyles in addition to your default. First make all the style changes to your chart that you want included in this custom style. You should see -Select- in the ChartStyles dropdown box, indicating that you are currently using a new, unsaved style.

1. Click Add New. A small form will appear:
   
2. Enter a name in the text field.
3. Click the Add button.

Your new ChartStyle will now be in the dropdown box as the selected ChartStyle.

You may have noticed a dropdown box called Button # in the Add New form. This is an advanced feature to set up StyleButtons (little gray shortcut links which appear to the left of your charts). You can learn more about this feature in our SharpCharts Manual: Using ChartStyles.

As a StockCharts member, you have the ability to save the charts you use regularly in an online list, called a ChartList. Basic members have one ChartList that can contain up to 100 charts. Extra! members can have up to 100 ChartLists, each of which can contain up to 500 charts.

For Basic members, the process for creating a ChartList is fairly straightforward. Each time you save a chart, it will be added to your ChartList. You can then edit that list, adding or deleting charts as you wish. For more about managing your ChartList, please refer to the Using Your Basic Favorites in the Support section of StockCharts.com.

Extra! members have the option of creating multiple ChartLists. Until you create additional ChartLists, all the charts you save will be added to your "Default List." You can change the name of this list and/or create additional custom-named lists at any time. We'll walk through the basics of creating and viewing your ChartLists below, but for additional instructions, please refer to the Using Your Extra Favorites in the Support section of StockCharts.com.

At the top of the page, to the right of the ticker entry, you'll see two blue arrows and a Chart dropdown box with -Your Saved Charts- in it. Extra! members will also see a ChartLists dropdown box.

Let's add the Coca Cola chart we created earlier to your list.

1. With the Coca Cola (KO) chart on your screen, click the Add New link just below the Chart dropdown box.
   
2. A small form will pop up with a default name for the chart you are saving ("KO - Daily Candlesticks, 520" in this case). You can use this default name or enter your own custom name. Extra! members will also see a ChartLists dropdown box. As an Extra! member, you can choose which of your ChartLists you'd like to save your chart in.
3. Click Add to save your chart.

The page will reload and you will see the chart you just saved as the selected entry in the Chart dropdown box.

Note: you'll follow the same steps if you'd like to rename one of your previously saved charts.

Each time you open a saved chart, it will appear with the same settings you originally applied when you saved it (but with up-to-date price data, unless you have set specific date parameters).

1. First, select the chart you want to delete from the Chart dropdown box.
2. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page to the ChartLists section.
   
3. Click the Delete option on the first line. This option is only visible when you have a chart selected in the Chart dropdown box.
4. You will be prompted with a popup asking "Are you sure you want to delete this chart?"
5. Click OK to remove the chart, or Cancel to keep it.

Note that removing a chart from your list is final, so make certain you want to delete the chart before you click OK!

Saved charts are displayed in numerical/alphabetical order. Giving custom names to your charts will not only identify the specific chart views you have created, but will also help you keep your list logically organized. One simple way to order your list is to put numbers in front of each chart name. If you want to change the order of your charts, you can simply change the numbers.

To view all the charts you've added to your ChartList(s), click on the View All link located in the right corner (just below the saved charts dropdown box). If you are a Basic member, clicking on this link will bring up all the charts you've saved. If you are an Extra! member, you'll see all the charts in your first (or Default) list. Extra! members will also see options for viewing and managing their different lists at the top of the page, including a dropdown in which you can select the list you'd like to view, another dropdown for the format you'd like to see the list in, and links to Edit List, Delete List and Create New List.

All members will see chart management options to the right of each chart. Basic members will see the following options: Rename, Edit, Edit Comments and Remove. Extra! members have a few more options, including Edit Info, Edit Annotations, Remove, Message Board Link, E-mail Chart and Other Charts.

For more information about managing Your Favorites, refer to the Using Your Basic Favorites or the Using Your Extra Favorites in the StockCharts Support section.

This brief tutorial was designed to quickly familiarize you with the essential features of your StockCharts membership. To learn more about all the powerful tools you have at your fingertips, we encourage you to explore the Support and Chart School segments of the site.

The Support section offers instructive manuals for many of the StockCharts tools. You can also find Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and an Support & Feedback form for requesting help if you get stuck. Chart School is filled with educational articles that will increase your knowledge of Charting and Technical Analysis techniques.

Happy Charting!