We are pleased to announce a new feature within Interactive Charts: changing the price chart type. You can select from four different price charts: the default line chart, the candlestick chart, the open-high-low-close (OHLC) chart or the area chart.
Background
The default line chart is our most simple price chart, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1
If you click on the “Technical Indicators” tab, you will notice we have added a “Chart Type” section underneath “Technical Indicators.” (Please see Figure 2 for reference.)
Figure 2
You can change the price chart by clicking on one of the four radio buttons below “Chart Type.”
Candlestick chart
Figures 3.1 to 3.3 show sample Candlestick Charts for Apple Inc. (AAPL, Financial), Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL, Financial) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT, Financial).
Figure 3.1: Candlestick chart for Apple, past three months
Figure 3.2: Candlestick chart for Alphabet, past three months
Figure 3.3: Candlestick chart for Wal-Mart, past three months
The candlestick chart, according to Investopedia, consists of a string of candlesticks where each candlestick gives the company’s opening, high, low and closing price for a specific day. You can visualize each candlestick like a “box and whisker” plot from statistics class: the box gives the range between the open price and the closing price while the whiskers stretch to the intraday high and low prices. Figure 3.4 illustrates the candlestick and its features.
Figure 3.4
A white box indicates the stock closed higher than the opening price while a filled-in box indicates the stock closed lower than the opening price.
Open-High-Low-Close chart
Unlike the candlestick chart, the OHLC chart does not show “boxes and whiskers.” Instead, the OHLC chart graphs vertical lines showing the price range and two branches for each trading day, as illustrated in Figures 3.5 and 3.6. The branch on the left indicates the price at market open while the branch on the right indicates the price at market close.
Figure 3.5: OHLC chart for Apple, past three months
Figure 3.6: OHLC chart for Alphabet, past three months
Area chart
Figure 3.7 shows a sample Area Chart for Wal-Mart.
The Area Chart plots the company’s historical price trend with the area below filled in. Nasdaq Inc. (NDAQ) calls this chart the “Mountain Chart” as it resembles a mountain.
See also
As candlestick and OHLC charts can facilitate technical analysis, GuruFocus logically included these price chart types in the Technical Indicators section. You can add up to three overlays and one indicator to the Chart by selecting the desired series from the drop-down menus.
Disclosure: The author has no positions in the stocks mentioned.
