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Q: My comment is about the Price Labels on SharpCharts. In many cases, it seems to be one day late for best buying time. For best selling time, it seems to be mostly correct.
What do you think? Is it possible to mark the best buying time one day earlier so that we can put in buy order at the open next day?
A: Price Labels are the little balloons with numbers in them that you can optionally add to any SharpChart. They appears above and below significant peaks and troughs on the chart and show you what the stock's value was at those points. You can enable/disable Price Labels using a checkbox in the "Chart Attributes" area below the chart on the SharpCharts workbench. Here's an example of a chart with Price Labels:
So, using the Price Labels, we can quickly see that the lowest price for INTC during the chart's period was 23.158 and the highest price was 27.008.
When using Price Labels, it is important to remember that Price Labels are not trading signals. They are not intended for that purpose.
The Price Labels are based on a calculation that looks "ahead" in time - i.e. it needs data on both the left and the right of the bar where the label appears. They are similar to the Zig Zag indicator in that regard. While it looks like they gave good signals in the past, that is because we "cheat" and look into the future when deciding where to draw them. That makes them useless for trading signals because you'll never see a Price Label appear at the far right edge of a chart. Another problem is that Price Labels often move as the chart develops further. Finally, we sometimes tweak the exact algorithm we use for placing Price Labels and so we haven't fully documented it.
Remember, Price Labels are there to show you the value of the stock at "significant" peaks and troughs so that you do have to look those values up in a table or use the inspector and move your mouse to see them. That is their only real purpose.
- Chip
