BUZZING ABOUT MURPHY

MURPHY SURVEY RESULTS - Last week we conducted a customer satisfaction survey for the Murphy Market Message. As a direct result of that survey, we've added a couple of new features to the "John Murphy" section of our site including a "Comments" box that allows Market Message subscribers to tell John how he's doing. The comments that readers have been sending in have helped John better target his recent articles to his audience. This results have been nothing short of spectacular. See the yellow box above for examples of what readers are now saying about the Murphy Market Message. Thanks to everyone that participated in the survey!

DATA FEED STATUS - The performance of our new Thomson data feed has more than met our expectations. Even under the heavy load we experienced last week, there were no performance problems at all. In fact, we've been able to increase the speed of our Scan Engine updates and Market Summary pages significantly as a result.

There are still several data quality issues that we are pursuing with Thomson however. These include problems with market breadth indexes like $TICKQ and $TRIN as well as issues with our commodity indices. Intraday data spikes are also appearing more than we'd like.

Good progress is being made on all of these remaining issues however we will continue to press Thomson for solutions until everything is back to the way it was before the change-over.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT - Here are several misconceptions that people had in our recent round of surveys:

• "Let me pay by check." - We do, just use the form on this page.
• "Only 3 years of historical data." - We have data going back to 1990 for most stocks. See this FAQ article for details.
• "No cross-hairs to examine charts with." - Just click on the "Annotate" link below any SharpCharts, then click once on the "Change Info Mode" button.
• "Never heard back from you." - This is almost always due to poorly configured spam filters. Make sure that yours is letting message from StockCharts.com through.
• "I was never able to login." - Over 70% of all login issues are due to people failing to type in the "@isp.com" part of their user ID.

Hopefully, this will help others avoid similar problems in the future.

HONORABLE MENTION FROM BARRON'S - Check it out!

"StockCharts.com makes its debut this year with an Honorable Mention for technical analysis, replacing ClearStation. We've always liked ClearStation's three-pronged approach to investing and its framework for the sharing of charts, but StockCharts.com more capably covers the nitty-gritty of technical analysis. " - Barron's Online 9/13/2004

Wonder what took them so long? Considering that we've won the Reader's Choice award from "Stocks & Commodities" magazine for three straight years...

HEY! WHY AREN'T WE ON THE BALLOT? - Speaking of TASC, the balloting for the 2005 awards is currently open to TASC subscribers. Unfortunately, if you'd like to vote for us, you'll need to enter StockCharts.com as a write-in candidate in the "Subscription Internet Analytical Platforms" and "Technical Analysis Websites" categories. Click here to get started. Note: You don't have to vote in all the categories, only the ones you are familiar with.

We are deeply appreciative of everyone who votes for us in this important industry survey!