Editor's Note: Julius de Kempenaer is the creator of Relative Rotation Graphs ("RRGs"). He will be contributing regular articles to this blog about RRGs and how they can be used to improved your investing results. Welcome Julius!
As of last Saturday 19 July 2014 StockCharts.com launched Relative Rotation Graphs as part of their web-based charting services.
The past few months here at RRG Research we have been working hard with the StockCharts.com staff to implement Relative Rotation Graphs in their web-based charting service. And I must say we're very impressed with their professionality. They have created a very nice web-based version of RRG. All this hard work has now lead to the official launch of RRGs on StockCharts.com. Needless to say that it's something we're very proud of.
As you may know RRGs have been available on the Bloomberg terminal since January 2011 and on Thomson Reuters EIKON terminals since late 2013. Market Analyst International has also been offering an RRG toolbox as an add-on for their Market Analyst v7 software since early 2013. Hence RRGs were only available on professional systems and a high-end technical analysis software package..... that is, until now!
The relationship with StockCharts.com goes back to 2009. In November of that year I presented Relative Rotation Graphs for the first time at a major conference, the annual IFTA conference in Chicago. In the room was Greg Morris, someone I only knew from his books until then, he approached me after my talk and told me: "this was the first time in 25 years someone actually showed me something 'new'." (Editor's Note: That sounds like something Greg would say.) When we found out that besides a passion for technical analysis we also shared a military / air force background, the day was too short and and the bar did not carry enough bottles of beer for us.
At some stage Greg asked me what I wanted to do with RRG. I told him I was already talking to Bloomberg for them to have RRGs on their professional terminal but that I woud be very interested to be introduced to StockCharts.com to get the tool on a service like theirs. Before I was back in Amsterdam Greg had connected me with Chip Anderson the president of StockCharts.com
Following that introduction Chip and I started to chat about having RRG on the SCC platform. With hindsight, that discussion was probably too early. RRGs were still "too rough" at the time and not very well known yet. Remember they were only introduced on the Bloomberg platform two years later in 2011. After our initial conversations I stayed in touch with Chip who proved to be a valuable source and I learned a lot about servicing retail clients and web-based charting platforms. The basic message he gave me was "It's a great tool but it needs (much) more recognition and visibility before I can do anything with it on StockCharts.com". Wise words indeed. You can only "introduce" once... and it has to be good right away.
Our connection was then renewed during the 2013 IFTA conference in San Franciso where Trevor and I sat down with Chip again. At that stage we already started to receive messages from visitors to our website - www.relativerotationgraphs.com - saying things like "please make RRGs available via sites like StockCharts.com". From November 2013 until April 2014 we stayed in touch discussing our potential co-operation which was then sealed with a hand shake and finalized during the MTA symposium in New York.
From May to July we worked together on the implementation. That period was nothing but professional "fun" and it resulted in a very good looking, and more importantly a very functional, implementation of Relative Rotation Graphs on their platform.
It's always fun to work with programmers and see how they implement certain things slightly different than others but most of all how they can get carried away thinking of all the "stuff" they can do based off the RRG concept. Pete Behmer, the programmer in charge of RRG on SCC, was no different and Chip told me he had to slow Pete down a few times because "otherwise we would still be playing and not have a product out for the users."
Last week Chip declared RRG ready for launch and subsequently the first version of the tool was introduced for StockCharts users last Saturday (July 19) and reading from the first reactions I think we can call it a success. I hope that the RRG tool on SCC will be picked up by its users like it is picked up on the other platforms where RRG is available. At RRG Research we love to get feedback and learn from it or help you to get your questions answered. So feel free to put up any questions or discussions in the forums or comment on any (blog) post, we are aiming to answer anything within 24 hours...
If you have not seen RRG on the StockCharts platform yet you can check it out here: http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/rrg/
What's next? We are currently working on an article for ChartSchool that will explain in more detail how RRGs work and how they can be interpreted. Until that article is complete, you can read the Instructions page here: http://stockcharts.com/docs/doku.php?id=other-tools:rrg-charts
And watch for more blog articles as I get more familiar with using StockCharts blogging tools.
Kind regards, Julius de Kempenaer
