Step-by-Step

Displaying More than One Stock on a Chart

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Having more than one stock on a chart is a very power feature that not everyone knows about.  It allows you to easily compare two or more stocks visually and opens up several kinds of powerful analysis techniques.

In this step-by-step tutorial, we'll create a chart of the Dow with the S&P Large Caps, Mid Caps, and Small Caps below it.


Step 1 - Create a chart of your "first" stock

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There are several ways to create a new SharpChart. The easiest is to just go to our homepage and enter "$INDU" into box for step #2, then press "Go".

Step 2 - Remove any existing Indicators and Overlays

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To make things easier, let's remove any Indicators and Overlays on your default chart. The quickest way to do that is to click the "Clear All" buttons in the "Overlays" area (#1) and "Indicators" area (#2). Be sure to click the "OK" button to confirm each removal. Finally, click the "Update" button (#3) to display your clean chart.

Step 3 - Add the "second" stock as a "Price" indicator

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So here's the magic: You can use the "Price" indicator to add additional ticker symbols to your chart. Simply select "Price" from one of the empty indicator dropdowns (#1) and then enter the ticker symbol you want to chart in the "Parameters" box (#2). In our case, we want to use "$spx" (which is, coincidentally, what is automatically added). Finally, we want the $SPX plot to appear underneath our current Dow chart, so we need to make sure that the "Position" dropdown is set to "Below" (#3). Finally, as always, let's click the "Update" button (#4) to see what we get.

Checking our progress so far

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At this point, you should have a chart that looks similar to the one above. (Note: Members that have changed their Default chart settings will probably see some differences in any areas that they changed.) Note that $SPX now appears below the chart of $INDU.

Step 4 - Add the other two ticker symbols

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Let's add the other two indexes by repeating the process we just learned. Don't forget to change the value in the "Parameters" boxes (#2 and #4) to $MID and $SML. When you're done, click the "Update" button (#5) to see the results.

Checking the results

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You should see something very similar to the chart above. This is about as good as a Free User of StockCharts.com can get. StockCharts.com members however have some very powerful additional capabilities that I want to look at next.

Step 5 - Opening the Advanced Options area

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Members who are logged in should see the green "Advanced Options" triangle located just to the right of the "Indicators" area. (Don't confuse it with the one next to the "Overlays" section.) If the Advanced Options area isn't already on your screen, click that green triangle to make it appear.

Step 6 - Change to an "All Candlestick" chart

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Let's display the other indices as candlesticks instead of line plots. Find the "Style" dropdowns (#1) and change all of them from "- Auto -" to "Candlestick", then click "Update" (#2). You should see 4 candlestick plots on your new chart. Terrific! But wait... The three indices' plots are not as tall as the $INDU plot. Let's fix that.

Step 7 - Increase the height of the Price plots

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For this example, we want the indices' to be 80% as tall as the Dow chart. The quickest way to do that is to use the "Reset All Heights" dropdown (#1). Select "0.8" from that dropdown, then click the "Set" button. As soon as you do that, all of the "Height" dropdowns (red box) are changed from "- Auto -" to "0.8". You can then click the "Update" button (#2) to see the results.

Checking our progress

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You should see something similar to the chart above (which has been scrunched down to save screen space). Four candlestick plots of different ticker symbols in one chart - pretty cool! There's still one more thing I want to add however - time scales for the $SPX and $MID plots.

Step 8 - Adding more time scales

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Back down in the "Indicators" area, select "Date/Time Axis" in the empty indicator dropdown. Then do it again so that you have two of them (red box).

Step 9 - Move the time scales into position

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Find the "Up" triangle in the "Reorder" column that's next to the first "Date/Time Axis" (Red Box). Click on that triangle twice to move that "Date/Time Axis" line directly under the "Price" indicator for $SPX. Next, find the "Up" triangle for the second "Date/Time Axis" (Blue Box) and click on it once to move it under the "Price" indicator for $MID. Finally, click "Update" to see our finished masterpiece!

Done!

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Click here to see a live version of this chart.

As with all forms of power, this one does come with some limitations. Free users and Basic members can only add up to 3 additional ticker symbols to any chart. Extra members can add up to 6.

Chip Anderson
About the author: is the founder and president of StockCharts.com. He founded the company after working as a Windows developer and corporate consultant at Microsoft from 1987 to 1997. In this blog, Chip shares his tips and tricks on how to maximize the tools and resources available at StockCharts.com, and provides updates about new features or additions to the site. Learn More
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