When you log in to Online Share Trading, you'll find a wide range of tools, reports and other resources available to help you make informed investment decisions. This guide will help you discover what charts are available in Online Share Trading and how you might gain valuable insights from each of them.
Doing your own research is important for every investor because it helps you to make better informed decisions.
There are a number of ways to research shares and each can play a part in how you approach investing. Stock charts look at price history and present this information to you in different ways for you to interpret.
Each stock chart can give you a different insight into stock performance and trends, which is why investors typically use several charts in combination to determine what they think a stock is worth and what they think the market will do next.
Every investor's interpretation is different, so it's important to know what your approach will be. You can find some great information about how to analyse stock charts by searching on Google.
You'll find some of the most popular charts available to you under the stock detail section of Online Share Trading.
Enter a company's name or stock code in the 'Company Search' field at the top of your Online Share Trading page.
Choose 'Charts' from the dropdown menu.
You'll now go straight through to charts.
Select a timeframe to analyse, from 1 day up to 10 years. The default timeframe is the current (or most recent) day's trading.
Choose if you want the results to be adjusted or unadjusted. The adjusted results will account for the effect of dividends, split shares and other capital reconstruction events, while the unadjusted results will exclude these.
Pick which type of stock chart you want to look at and a time period of one day or more that you want to analyse.
You can select two moving averages from five days to 90 days.
Choose either a linear or logerithmic scale for your vertical axis.
There are a selection of indicators available for you to choose including volume, RSI and stochastic.
This is the most popular and simple chart. It plots the stock's closing price each day over the period you choose.
These are trading bands plotted above and below a 20-day moving average and can be used as an indicator of volatility in the market. The wider the bands are, the more volatile the market place.
When the market touches or moves beyond the upper band, the market is considered over-bought. When it does the same with the lower band, the market is thought to be over-sold.
Some more technical investors believe that when the Bollinger bands move closer to the market average, or contract, this may be an early indication that volatility is about to increase sharply.
Candlestick charts give you a quick glance of the highs and lows of the day's trading activity for a single security. The thin line (the wick) shows you the range of prices that day. The fatter section (the candle) tells you the opening and closing prices. If the candle is shaded, the price was down at market close from where it started the trading day. If the candle is white, then the price finished up from where it began the day.
Similar to a candlestick chart, an OHLC chart shows you the Open, High, Low, and Closing prices for each day, demonstrating movements in price. A tick mark on the left shows the opening price and a tick mark on the right shows the closing price.
Investors who study OHLC charts say that if the close price is closer to the top of the bar then there is demand for the security and the share price will rise. Conversely, if the close bar is closer to the bottom of the bar then demand for the security is weak and the share price is likely to fall.
Shows as a percentage how much a stock has risen or fallen over the time period you choose, based on the daily closing price.
Once you have chosen a chart type, you can review the stock performance from many different view points by using filters. Remember this data can be interpreted in a number of ways, so you should weigh this up with other information available and consider how it fits with your investment approach.
A moving average smooths out the pricing based on the average you specify, over the period you're looking at, making it easier to see underlying trends. The shorter the average you choose to look at, the more sensitive it will be to price changes and the less 'smooth' it will appear.
Moving averages are one of the simplest and most widely used indicators considered by investors. With Online Share Trading you can plot up to two moving averages on a chart.
Choose the scale you want for the vertical axis: Linear or Logarithmic.
A linear scale will plot an equal distance between prices on the vertical axis.
A logarithmic scale will plot an equal distance between percentage changes on the vertical axis. For instance, the distance between 5 and 10 (100% change) will be the same as that between 20 and 40 (also a 100% change). This can make it easier to see what your gains or losses might actually be.
This will plot the number of shares changing hands during the period you're looking at. This gives you an indication on how active the market was.
A Relative Strength Indicator is a momentum indicator. It compares the size of gains against losses to suggest if a stock might be over-bought and over-sold. It does this by plotting a stock on an index from 1 to 100. Traditionally, shares above 70 are considered over-bought and those below 30 are over-sold.
Like the RSI, a Stochastic oscillator tracks market momentum by plotting a share's closing price over a specific period on an index from 1 to 100. The Stochastic Indicator works on the assumption that the closing price should be close to current trend. Traditionally, a stock is thought to be over-bought when it's above 80 and over-sold when it's below 20. The fast Stochastic indicator is more sensitive to pricing movements where the slow one uses the 3-day moving average to smooth out the trend.
Charts are just one of the powerful tools you'll find inside Online Share Trading that can help you make investment decisions. If you haven't already, it's a good idea to read our guides on watchlists, portfolios and researching companies.
View market and company charts in Online Share Trading. Log in or join now.
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