Charts v.6.1



Charts v.6.2

Stock Charting Tool For PalmOS

Copyright © 2002-2004 Roger Tawa

charts

[pic]

This software is provided “AS IS”. You shall not modify, decompile, disassemble, decrypt, extract, or otherwise reverse engineer the software. I (ROGER TAWA) MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES ABOUT THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR QUALITY OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE SOFTWARE. I MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF THE SUITABILITY OF THE SOFTWARE, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. I AM NOT A REGISTERED INVESTMENT ADVISOR, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER OR LICENSED TO TRADE IN SECURITIES OF ANY KIND. I SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR LOSS SUFFERED BY USERS AS A RESULT OF USING OR DISTRIBUTING THIS SOFTWARE.

[pic]

Icon design provided by mythomania factory,[pic]

Introduction

Charts is a Palm OS application for displaying price charts with intra-day updates, retrieving delayed quotes, sending price and/or volume alerts, and viewing fundamental financial data of stocks traded on North American and worldwide markets.

Price charts, both daily and weekly, show 50- and 200-day MAs and various indicators, such as Volume, 50-day volume MA, Relative Strength Line, 50-day Up/Down Volume Ratio, and Market Direction. Daily price charts show 18 months of historical data and weekly charts show 3 years of historical data.

Fundamental financial data includes up to 8 quarters or quarterly EPS and sales data, up to 5 years of annual EPS, sales and net margins data, plus ROE, long-term debt, and institutional sponsorship. For those with a subscription to , CANSLIM evaluation data from the site can also be included.

Stocks can be organized into separate watchlists for easier management of your portfolio. Using Charts is as simple as entering one or more stock symbols and performing a HotSync operation. The HotSync downloads all the necessary information from the Internet and then uploads it to your handheld.

Requirements

To run Charts, you must have a PalmOS handheld and a Microsoft Windows PC. The following are the complete requirements:

- a handheld with:

o PalmOS 3.5 or later

o Support for colour or at least 16 levels of gray

o For quotes, a wired or wireless connection to the Internet

- a PC:

o Running Windows 98/2000/XP

o With ~562KB of free disk space

o Plus ~32KB of free disk space per stock downloaded to the handheld

o With access to the Internet

o Running HotSync Manager 3.1.0 or later

Latest Version

Information about the latest version can always be found at . The current version can be downloaded from .

Manifest

You should have received the Charts application and supporting files in a zip file that contains the following:

• Charts.prc

• ChartConduit.dll

• ChartAccel.exe

• Readme.txt

• Condmgr.dll

• Hsapi.dll

• AppSlipRotate.prc

• StatusBarLib.prc

• Setup.exe

Please note that documentation is not included in the zip file, in order to keep it as small (and hence as quick to download) as possible. Full documentation can be found at . A Microsoft Word 2002 version of this webpage is available at .

Installation

To install, run the Setup.exe program. Once the installation is done, you may delete the zip file and all the files that were extracted from it. Setup has made a copy of all necessary files to the location that you specified during installation.

Don’t forget to perform a HotSync following the installation. If you choose to run the Charts HotSync Accelerator, start it, press the “Download Now” button, and let it finish before your first HotSync.

To uninstall Charts, run the Uninstall.exe program found in the location that you specified during installation. Once the uninstall is complete, don’t forget to remove the Charts application from your handheld.

Entering the Registration Code

Charts requires a registration code, and will impose a 3-stock limit until the correct registration code is provided. If you purchased Charts from Handango or Palmgear, your registration code will have been provided to you at check-out time. If you purchased Charts by paying via Paypal, you will receive an email with your registration code.

To enter the code, please follow these steps:

1. Run Charts on your handheld.

2. Select the menu item “Options / About Charts” to open the About form.

3. Enter your registration code in the area provided and tap the OK button. You should see a confirmation message that the registration code has been accepted.

Tungsten T3

In order to take full advantage of the extra large screen of your T3, you need to install two more .prc files: AppSlipRotate.prc and StatusBarLib.prc. Both files can be found in the directory in which you installed Charts.

To install the .prc files, use the Palm Quick Install tool.

IMPORTANT: You must install both .prcs at the same time; installing them separately may force a hard reset.

These files are provided by palmOne to be used only on the Tungsten T3. Installing them on another handheld device will mostly likely cause it to fail.

Running the Application

Charts uses three windows: a Watchlist Window, a Price Chart Window and a CANSLIM Window. When you first start Charts, and after each HotSync, the Watchlist window is displayed as shown below in Figure 1a. Subsequently, Charts will return to the window it was last displaying when you switched to another application.

Watchlist Window

Figure 1a shows 6 stocks in all, of which the second is selected. For each stock, the watchlist window displays, from left to right: the stock symbol, the close price, the change in price, the daily volume, and the daily volume as compared to its 50-day MA.

The stock’s symbol will be displayed in a bold font if an alert has been triggered for this stock today. See the Price and Volume Alerts section below for more details on alerts.

If you prefer to see the percent change in price instead of the actual change in price, tap down on the ‘%’ push button. Percent change in price is shown in Figure 1b. Tap down on the ‘$’ push button to see the actual change in price.

The date for the close price and daily volume is shown next to Last Updated at the top of the window. If the stock has been updated intra-day, the date will be followed by @time which represents when the last update occurred.

For example, in Figure 1a, we see that on October 1st, 2004, AVID closed at 48.56$, up 1.69$ on volume of 973000, which is 107% above its 50-day MA volume.

Tip: if your handheld supports a colour display, the price change will be displayed in red if the price is down for the day or blue if the price is up for the day. Up and down are determined by comparing the close price of the given day relative to the close price of the previous day. On gray displays, up day price changes are shown in black and down days in light gray.

You can organize your stocks into various watchlists and filter which are shown using the popup list in the top right. To view stocks that belong to a given watchlist, tap down on the popup list and choose the watchlist to display. To view all stocks from all watchlists, choose “All”, as shown in Figure 1a. To add, change, or remove a watchlist, tap down on the popup list and choose “Edit Watchlists…”. You can create up to 16 different watchlists.

To add stocks to a watchlist, select the “Watchlist / Add…” menu item. This brings up a dialog box where you can enter one or more stock symbols. To enter more than one, separate them with spaces. Stocks are added to the watchlist currently selected in the popup list. If “All” is selected, the stocks are added to the “Unfiled” watchlist.

Tip: If you don’t know the symbol for the stock you would like to chart, use the symbol lookup feature at .

Tip: Stock symbols must 15 characters or less.

Tip: You can change the watchlist that a stock belongs to in the Chart Window by choosing the menu item “Options / Stock Details…”.

To remove a stock from a watchlist, first select it and select the “Watchlist / Remove…” menu item. A dialog box will be displayed for you to confirm the action.

Stocks can also be removed by transferring them to the “Remove on exit” watchlist. All stocks in this list will be removed when you switch to another application. Please note that there will be no confirmation dialog in this case. If this category does not exist, you can create it, keeping in mind that capitalization is important.

To see the daily or weekly price chart of a stock, first select it and then press the Chart button.

5-Way Navigator

Charts fully supports the Palm 5-way Navigator in the watchlist.

With no stock selected in the watchlist, pressing Up or Down will scroll the list by one page. Pressing Select will select the top most visible stock. Pressing Left will toggle between percent change and absolute change in price. Pressing Right will opens the watchlist popup list.

With a stock selected in the watchlist, pressing Up or Down will select the previous or next stock, respectively. Pressing Select will open the Chart Window for the selected stock. Pressing Left will unselect the stock. Finally, pressing Right will open the Delayed Quote dialog for the selected stock.

Delayed Quotes

To obtain a delayed quote for a stock, first select it and then press the Quote button. If a connection to the Internet is not yet established, one will be set up. It is possible to obtain a delayed quote for a stock even if you have not yet downloaded its chart data.

If you have already downloaded chart data for this stock, the quote information will be used to update the daily chart, providing intra-day updates. Note that calculated fields, such 50- and 200-day MAs as well as the various indicators will not be calculated for this day, and will be copied from the previous day. The weekly chart is not updated with quote data.

Figure 2 is an illustration of the quote dialog. Press the Refresh button to download another delayed quote for the stock, or Done to close the dialog. Press the Up or Down scroll buttons to get a quote for the previous or next stock in your watchlist.

Depending on where you are physical located when trying to download a delayed quote, you may need to use an HTTP proxy server. If so, from the Watchlist Window, choose the “Options / Preferences…” menu item, select “Use proxy”, and enter the name and port number of the proxy in the format “proxyname:port”. Please consult your network administrator to determine if you need to use this option and to obtain the name and port number of your proxy.

If it often occurs that Charts times out before receiving a quote from the server, you may increase the timeout value. This is the number of seconds that Charts will wait for a quote from the server before timing out.

Remember that to use the delayed quote feature, you must be able to connect to the Internet directly from your handheld, either via its cradle, a wired or wireless modem, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.

The Quote dialog also supports the Palm 5-way Navigator. Pressing Select is equivalent to tapping the Done button, and pressing Right is equivalent to tapping the Refresh button.

Periodic Intra-day Updates

Charts supports periodic intra-day updated using delayed quotes during open market hours. Using periodic updates is a three step process:

1. select the stocks you would like to update during open market hours

2. choose the frequency of the updates

3. choose the hours in which periodic updates will occur

To turn on periodic updates for a given stock, select the stock in the watchlist and choose the “Options / Stock Details…” menu item. Make sure the box beside “Update periodically” is checked and press OK. To turn on periodic updates for all stocks in the currently selected watchlist, choose the “Options / Watchlist Details…” menu item. Press the Yes button for “Update periodically” and then press OK.

Next, to determine the frequency of the updates, choose the “Options / Periodic Updates…” menu item. Enter the number of minutes between updates at the top.

Note: Updating too often may deplete your batteries more quickly than usual. Also, if the time between updates is smaller than the auto-off time of your handheld, the screen will never turn off! Please keep these considerations in mind when choosing how often to update your stock prices.

Enter a value of zero to disable periodic updates.

Finally, choose the hours of the day during which periodic updates will occur. The times are specified in your local time zone, which may be different from the time zone of the markets whose stocks you are watching. For example, if you live on the west coast of North America and are watching NYSE stocks, then the stock market is open between 6:30AM and 1:00PM your time.

At any time, you may force an update by choosing the “Watchlist / Update Now” menu item.

Price and Volume Alerts

Charts can trigger an alert if the price of a stock moves above a target price (breaks out) or below a target price (breaks down). Alerts are tied in with the periodic update feature, so to enable this feature, you must perform steps 2 and 3 listed above in the “Periodic Intra-day Updates” section.

When an alert is triggered, you will receive notification on your handheld. The type and manner of the notification (sound, vibrate, blinking LED, etc.) can be configured in the “Sounds & Alerts” section of the system preferences. Triggered alerts also cause the Attention Indicator to flash in the top left corner of screen. Tapping the indicator will open the attention list dialog. Tapping the box to the left of the alert will dismiss it. Tapping the text of the alert will open the daily chart for that stock.

Breakouts

To enable a breakout alert for a given stock, select it in the watchlist and choose the menu “Options / Alerts…”. Check the box to the left of “Moves above” to enable breakout alerts and choose the target price from Most Recent Peak, 2nd Most Recent Peak, 52-week High, or a custom price target. Peaks within the last two days are ignored for purposes of calculating Most Recent Peak and 2nd Most Recent Peak.

To make a breakout alert conditional on volume, check the next box and enter the multiple of the 50-day volume average to use as the target volume. Charts compares the day’s projected volume, extrapolated by linear interpolation from the last update time and volume, to the target volume. If the projected volume is greater than the target volume, the condition has been met.

Tip: The projected volume becomes more accurate as the day progresses, and can be quite inaccurate at the beginning of the day.

For CANSLIM followers looking for cup-with-handle breakouts, you would typically set the target price as the Most Recent Peak and make the alert conditional on 1.5 times ADV.

The breakout price will be shown on both daily and weekly price charts as a light green horizontal line across the chart.

Breakdowns

To enable a breakdown alert for a given stock, select it in the watchlist and choose the menu “Options / Alerts…”. Check the box in front of “moves below” to enable breakdown alerts when the stock's price moves below a target price. Unlike breakouts, there are no preset price targets and you cannot make the alert conditional on volume.

The breakdown price will be shown on both daily and weekly price charts as a light red horizontal line across the chart.

Price Chart Window

A typical daily price chart for a stock is shown in Figure 3. This shows the “normal detail” daily bar chart for AVID. Figures 4 and 5 show the “high detail” and “low detail” daily bar charts respectively. To change the detail, use the first four items under the “Options” menu.

Price charts can also be shown using candlesticks by selecting “Draw charts with candlesticks” in the Preferences dialog, as shown in Figure 4b. Due to the number of pixels required to draw candlesticks, this mode can only be used in High and High+Wide detail.

The top ¾ of the window is the price bar chart, with the 50-day MA show as a solid green line, the 200-day MA shown as a dotted orange line, and the RS line shown as a solid blue line (see the Indicators section below for a description of the RS line). On gray displays, the 50-day MA is shown as a solid gray line, and the 200-day MA as a dotted light gray line, and the RS line is shown as a solid dark gray line. The high detail chart shows open/high/low/close prices. The normal detail chart shows high/low/close prices. The low detail chart shows only high/low prices.

The daily price bar is coloured blue if the close of that day is higher or equal to the close of the previous day, and red if the close of that day is lower than the close of the previous day. The vertical scale is in the currency in which the stock is traded.

The price chart will show prices at peaks and troughs to more easily gauge their values. For example, in Figure 3 we see that the price temporarily peaked on the 22nd of April at 55.00$.

If you have enabled breakout and/or breakdown alerts for this stock, then the price of these alerts will be shown on the chart. Breakouts prices are shown as a horizontal light green line and breakdown prices are shown as a horizontal light red line.

If you have entered an average price paid for the stock in the Stock Details dialog, this value will appear as a dotted horizontal red/green line.

[pic]

Figure 3

[pic]

Figure 4

[pic]

Figure 4b

[pic]

Figure 5

Indicators

The bottom ¼ of the window shows a user-selectable indicator. The indicators that may be chosen are Volume and Up/Down Volume Ratio.

You can choose which indicator to display using the Indicator menu items.

T3 users: in portrait view, Charts will use the extra height of the screen to show both indicators simultaneously. This gives you a complete picture of the stock without needing to switch indicators. See Figure 6.

[pic]

Figure 6

Volume Indicator

Figures 3 to 5 show examples of the volume indicator. A 50-day volume MA is shown as a solid green line (or solid gray line on gray displays), and market direction indicators are shown as diamonds above the volume bars (when enabled).

To keep the volume indicator useful, the maximum height is not more than 2-3 times the maximum 50-day volume MA. Therefore, any daily volumes that are greater than this maximum height are shown with a dotted portion near the top. This can be seen in the tall blue line on the 16th of April at the far right in Figure 3.

Market Direction

The market direction indicators are modeled after the indicators described at , which themselves are modeled after the CANSLIM market direction indicators.

This indicator can be individually enabled or disabled for stocks in the Stock Details dialog by selecting or unselecting the “Show market direction” check box. You can open the dialog from the Watchlist window by choosing the “Options / Stock Details…” menu item or the Charts window by choosing the “Options / Details…” menu item. Normally, this indicator is used only with indices, such as the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite Index.

Blue diamonds correspond to Follow Through days, and red diamonds correspond to Distribution days. Distribution days are further categorized as:

Ordinary Distribution days (open red diamond)

price is down while volume is up

Heavy Distribution days (red diamond with dot in the middle)

price is down at least 1% while volume is up

Heavy Distribution Plus days (solid red diamond)

price is down at least 1% while volume is up and above 50-day volume MA

If you prefer to use the standard CANSLIM definition, then you can simply treat all red diamonds as Distribution days.

Note that Follow Through days are meant to be used only to look for market bottoms, so they should be ignored otherwise. Here is a question and answer from the “Ask Bill” section of :

Ask Bill O'Neil

Monday, June 23, 2003

Question:

Does a new follow-through day cancel out any distribution days since the first follow-through? If today turns out to be a follow-through, would it wipe out the distribution days of the last couple weeks?

- Submitted from Huntington, Conn.

Answer:

The concept of a follow-through day is generally reserved for markets that are at a turning point following a downtrend. A follow-through day is the first indication that the market may be commencing an uptrend. Assuming the market continues to gain strength and move up, the occurrence of one or more of the major averages closing up for the day on higher volume wouldn't be called a "follow-through" day because the market has already turned and is in the midst of an uptrend. However, healthy price and volume action occurs when the market moves up on higher volume, and moves down on lower volume. When you begin to see higher volume selling in the major averages over a short period of time, this is evidence of distribution and is a warning sign that the market may be topping.

Ref:

Investor's Corner

Thursday, May 30, 2002

Spot A Follow-Through To Find Market Bottom

BY JONAH KERI

Up/Down Volume Ratio Indicator

The up/down volume ratio indicator is a ratio of the volume on up days to the volume on down days over the last 50 trading days. See the bottom of Figure 7.

The green area represents a ratio greater than 1.0. The yellow area represents a ratio of 0.7 to 1.0. Finally, the red area represents a ratio less than 0.7. On a gray display, the areas are white, light gray, and gray respectively.

RS Line Indicator

The RS line, or relative strength of the stock vs. the S&P 500, is a ratio of the stock’s price to the price of the S&P 500 index. (This indicator appears in the price chart itself and is not shown as a separate indicator at the bottom.)

The vertical scale is not shown since the direction and slope of the RS line is the important aspect of this indicator.

Daily or Weekly Charts

All charts can also be displayed as weekly instead of daily. To switch between the two, use the first two options in the “Display” menu. (If your handheld has a Palm 5-way Navigator, you can press the Address button to toggle between the two.) To quickly determine if you are looking at a daily chart or a weekly chart, look at the letter following the date in the title bar (just to the right of the stock symbol).

For example, in Figure 7, we see that this is a daily chart since the date (5-03, or May 3rd) is followed by a ‘D’. Weekly charts show a date followed by a ‘W’.

The price of weekly charts can be displayed in linear or log scale. To change the scale, choose the “Options / Preferences…” menu item, and select or unselect “Show weekly chart in log scale” as needed. This setting applies to all charts. Note that displaying weekly charts in log scale is slower than displaying them in linear scale. However, on ARM-based handhelds, the difference in speed is not as great.

All the features described above for daily charts also apply to weekly charts. The U/D Volume Ratio is calculated over the previous 10 weeks. With respect to moving averages, 10-week and 40-week MAs replace the 50-day and 200 daily MAs, respectively. Also, the volume indicator shows the average daily volume for the corresponding week.

Interacting with the Chart

Charts downloads approximately 18 months worth of daily trade information and three calendar years worth of weekly trade information to your handheld for each stock. If your handheld has a Palm 5-way Navigator, you can view earlier or later data by pressing the Left or Right buttons, respectively. Otherwise, you can view earlier or later data by pressing the Address and Phonebook buttons, respectively.

To scroll immediately to the most recent trade, write the letter ‘T’ in the graffiti area.

To refresh the screen, write the letter ‘G’ in the graffiti area. To speed up chart drawing and increase interactivity, Charts uses optimizations that may occasionally cause screen-redrawing glitches. In these cases, refreshing the screen will correct them.

To change the indicator, use the Indicator menu and choose the indicator you would like to see. If your handheld has a Palm 5-way Navigator, you can press the Phonebook button to toggle through all the indicators.

The title bar shows detailed information about a trade. To change the trade being displayed, use the stylus to tap down over the chart. Any vertical portion of the screen (except for the title bar itself) over the trade will do. You can also move to the next or previous trade by writing space or backspace, respectively, in the graffiti area.

The detailed information contains two lines of text. The top line shows, from left to right, the date (month-day, followed by ‘D’ or ‘W’ for daily or weekly view), U/D volume ratio, and volume. The bottom line shows the open, high, low, close prices in that order.

To view the chart of the next or previous stock without returning to the Watchlist Window, use the Up and Down buttons.

If your handheld has a Palm 5-way Navigator, pressing the Address button toggles between daily and weekly charts, and pressing the Phonebook button cycles through all various indicators.

Zoom In and Out

If the daily price range is small compared to the height of the chart window, you can zoom in or out to get a better look using the “Display / Fit to Prices” menu item. This will fit the vertical price range so that the entire area of the price bar chart fits the currently displayed trades, with some room to show the peak and trough prices. You can zoom in further by choosing “Display / Fit Tighter” or zoom out by choosing “Display / Fit Looser”. To reset the price scale choose “Display / Fit All”.

CANSLIM Window

The CANSLIM window shows supplemental information about a stock, with emphasis on information that is most relevant to the CANSLIM investment method. This information includes:

• Full company name

• Industry name

• Quarterly EPS and sales, as well as growth rate as compared to same quarter the year before

• Annual EPS and sales, as well as growth rate as compared to the previous year, and net margins

• Return on Equity

• Long-term Debt to Equity ratio

• Percent off 52 week high

• Number of institutional investors and the net institutional share change in most recent quarter

CANSLIM information is available for most stocks traded on US exchanges and some stocks on other exchanges. This information is not available for indices, mutual funds or ETFs. To determine if CANSLIM information is available for a particular stock, visit and enter the symbol or name of the stock.

Downloading of CANSLIM information can be individually enabled or disabled for stocks in the Stock Details dialog by selecting or unselecting the “No CANSLIM data” check box. You can open the dialog from the Watchlist window by choosing the “Options / Stock Details…” menu item or the Charts window by choosing the “Options / Details…” menu item.

If you are a subscriber (GoldX or Platinum), the following information can also be included in addition to the above:

• CET, CEF, and CE scores

• Industry rank and score

• Relative Strength of stock

[pic]Figure 8 shows an animated GIF of the CANSLIM window. The top portion of the CANSLIM window always shows the company name, industry name, ROE and long term debt.

If you have chosen to include information, you will also see the industry’s rank and score next to its name. At the bottom of the window, you will see the CE Zone, CET, CEF, and CE scores for the stock. The background colour of the CE Zone value corresponds to its colour as defined by .

Tapping the stylus down on one of the CANSLIM letters will change the information displayed in the lower portion of the window. The letters correspond to the following information:

C – Current quarterly EPS and sales

A – Annual EPS and sales

N – New products, new management, new highs

SL – Supply/demand and leader/laggard

I – Institutional sponsorship

M – Market direction

C

When this push button is pressed, the bottom portion of the window displays the four most recent quarterly EPS and sales numbers, and compares them to the same quarter one year earlier. The percent change in EPS or sales year to year is shown on the far right. You may choose to see EPS or sales by tapping on the respective push buttons to the right of the CANSLIM buttons.

For example, in Figure 8 we see that the most recent quarter for eResearch Technology, Inc. is March 2004. In this quarter, it had and EPS of 20¢, as compared to 7¢ the year before. This represents a 185.71% increase in EPS. Similarly, the next line shows the previous quarter’s (December 2003) EPS and how it compares to the same quarter one year before.

EPS numbers are show in dollars, and sales numbers are shown in millions of dollars.

A

When this push button is pressed, the bottom portion of the window displays up to the 5 most recent annual EPS and sales numbers, and compares them to the year before. The percent change in EPS or sales is shown just to the left of the EPS or sales number. The percent in the far right is the net profit margin for the year. You may choose to see EPS or sales by tapping on the respective push buttons to the right of the CANSLIM buttons.

For example, in Figure 8 we see that the most recently completed fiscal year for eResearch Technology, Inc. is 2003 (fiscal year ended in December 2003). eResearch Technology, Inc had and EPS of 0.40$, which is 122.22% above the EPS of 0.18$ the year before. eResearch Technology, Inc has a net profit margin of 21.71% in 2003.

EPS numbers are show in dollars, and sales numbers are shown in millions of dollars.

N

When this push button is pressed, the bottom portion of the window displays how far off the most recent closing price is relative to the stock’s 52 week high. The last close plus 50- and 200-day MAs are also shown for comparison purposes. To the right of the 50- and 200-day MAs is a percentage that shows how far off the last close is from the respective MA.

It is not possible to capture “new product” or “new management” with simple numbers, so you are encouraged to visit and the company’s own website to get more information on this subject.

SL

When this push button is pressed, the bottom portion of the window displays the most recent 50-day volume MA and the up/down volume ratio. If you have chosen to include information, you will also see the Relative Strength of the stock as calculated by that site.

I

When this push button is pressed, the bottom portion of the window displays the number of institutional investors and the net share change (in thousands) in the most recent quarter.

M

When this push button is pressed, the bottom portion of the window simply displays a message explaining how to gauge the market’s direction. This is not specific to the given stock, but nonetheless is a very important factor in the CANSLIM investment method.

While in the CANSLIM window, you can use the Up and Down buttons to move to the previous or next stock. Tap down on the pop up list in the top right to change the watchlist that this stock belongs to.

If your handheld has a Palm 5-way Navigator, you can use the Left button to cycle through the CANSLIM letters, and the Right button to toggle between EPS or sales.

Notes

Charts can save one or more notes with each stock. To add a general note about the stock, first select it in the Watchlist window and choose the “Watchlist / Note” menu item. To add a note to a specific date or trade, open the Chart window, select the date (making sure the date is correctly displayed in the title bar) and choose the “Display / Note” menu item.

After selecting the appropriate menu item, the Note window will be displayed, with the selected date shown at the top. Enter the note in the area provided using graffiti or your keyboard.

Use the Prev and Next buttons to scroll through all the notes of your stock in chronological order (the general note always being first). Notes can be added to both the daily chart and weekly chart. Depending on which chart is currently being displayed in the Chart window, pressing Prev and Next will scroll only though the daily or weekly notes.

After entering the note, press the Done button to return to the previous window. If a particular trade has a note attached to it, the stock’s chart with show a dotted circle below the respective bar. All notes have a maximum of 249 characters.

If your handheld has a Palm 5-way Navigator, the Left button performs the same action as pressing the Prev button and the Right button performs the same action as pressing the Next button. Pressing Select is equivalent to pressing the Done button.

Shortcuts

Charts supports standard PalmOS menu shortcuts, as shown when the menus are pulled down. However, to further simplify interaction, you can omit the standard “command stroke”. For example, to change to high detail, you can do any of the following:

- choose the “Options / Detail - High” menu item [this requires a minimum of two taps, but most probably three]

- write “command” and “1” [this requires writing two characters]

- write “1” [this requires writing only one character]

All of the standard menu shortcuts in all windows are available in this shorthand form. If your handheld contains a built-in keyboard, or you are using an external keyboard, you can simply press the corresponding key instead of writing the graffiti letter.

Conduit Configuration

It is possible to turn Charts on or off during HotSyncs. See Figure 9 for the Charts conduit configuration dialog. To open this dialog, click on the HotSync icon ([pic]) in the system tray, and choose “Custom…”. Scroll the conduit list until you see Charts. Select it and press the “Change…” button.

To disable the conduit only for the next HotSync, choose “Do nothing”, make sure “Set as default” is not selected, and press OK.

To disable the conduit for all subsequent HotSyncs, choose “Do nothing”, make sure “Set as default” is selected, and press OK.

The middle of the dialog can be used to change the HTTP proxy settings for the conduit. Note that these settings will apply to all subsequent HotSyncs regardless of whether “Set as default” is selected or not, and apply to all handheld that HotSync with this PC.

The bottom of the dialog is used to control whether CANSLIM information is uploaded to your handheld, and whether to read CANSLIM evaluation data. If you choose not to upload CANSLIM information, then the CANSLIM Window will not be usable. Also note that CANSLIM data is only downloaded by the Charts HotSync Accelerator, so you must be using it as well.

If you are a Platinum or GoldX subscriber to and you would like to take that site’s CANSLIM evaluation data with you on your handheld, then check the “Merge BoW” check box and type the full path to the breakoutwatch.csv file you download from the site. All the stocks in this list will be uploaded to your handheld, with all CANSLIM evaluation data, including CET, CEF, RS, industry name, rank and score.

To use with Charts, follow these steps each day:

1. After receiving the “Breakout and Top Ten” email report, login to the site.

2. Go to the Breakoutwatch list and set up the filtering and sort order to your liking.

3. Go to the Download tab and press the “Click to Download” button. Make sure that you use the same path and file name that you entered into the Conduit Configuration dialog.

4. On the next HotSync, the stocks that met your filter criteria will be uploaded to your handheld in the sort order selected. The stocks will appear in the “Unfiled” watchlist on your handheld. Review each stock, moving those that interest you to the “Buy on b/o” watchlist and those that do not interest you to the “Remove on exit” watchlist.

If you are not a subscriber, then I encourage you to give them a try. You will find that your time spent mining for stocks that are ready to buy is considerably reduced. They have daily watchlists of stocks ready to breakout and issue email alerts when they do so, very clear charts and several tools aimed at assisting you with your due diligence. If you are a CANSLIM oriented investor then they have a neat tool that analyses any stock using the CANSLIM criteria. You can help support the further development of Charts for Palm OS by using the following link to visit the site and subscribe for their trial.



During a HotSync operation, the conduit pops up a window over the standard HotSync window to provide progress information and to allow you to cancel the operation.

Charts HotSync Accelerator

The Charts HotSync Accelerator is a program that runs on the PC with which you HotSync your handheld. The primary purpose of the accelerator is to download all the necessary information from the Internet before you HotSync and save it to your PC’s hard disk. When you later perform a HotSync, the conduit simply reads the files instead of accessing the Internet, reducing your HotSync time.

Use of the accelerator is optional. If you do not use it, the conduit will access the Internet as before. The only exception to this rule is for the CANSLIM data. This takes much longer to download than the price and volume data, so the conduit will not attempt to do so. If you intend on using the CANSLIM data, you must run the accelerator.

The accelerator’s window contains instructions on how to set the time at which it will download data from the Internet. The time you choose depends on when you normally HotSync your handheld. You should choose a time after midnight in order to download data from the previous trading day, but within 12 hours of the time you HotSync. For example, if you normally HotSync each morning at 7:00 AM, then you can set the accelerator to download the data at 3:00 AM. Remember that your Internet connection must be active when the accelerator attempts to download the data.

The simplest way to use the accelerator is to leave it running at all times, minimized in you task bar. You can add it to your Startup folder in order to have it run each time you start your computer or login. Alternatively, you may run the accelerator as a Scheduled Task. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Open a command prompt from the Start Menu. Choose “Start > Run…”, type “cmd” and press OK.

2. In the command prompt window, type the following:

at 3:00 /every:monday,tuesday,wednesday,thursday,friday "C:\Program Files\Charts\chartaccel.exe" /downloadandexit

This assumes you installed Charts in C:\Program Files\Charts.

You can force the accelerator to download data immediately by pressing the “Download Now” button.

The accelerator will download data for all handheld that HotSync with the PC it runs on.

Limitations

Charts can only display stocks whose price is never more than 65535$. This is very useful for displaying charts of indices, like the Dow Jones Industrial. If the price is never more than 655.35$, the price is accurate to the cent. If the price is never more than 6553.50$, the price is accurate the nearest 0.10$. Otherwise, the price is accurate to the nearest dollar. If the stock does not trade in dollars, the same limits apply to the stock’s respective currency.

Charts can only display stocks whose volume is never more than 2 billion shares traded per day, or never more than 2 billion daily average shares traded per week. Some indices and mutual funds do not provide volume data. Please refer to the chart of the respective index or mutual fund on Yahoo Finance to determine if volume is available.

Note that the volume for indices, such as the Dow Jones Industrial (^DJI) and S&P 500 (^SPX), show the total NYSE volume. The NASDAQ Composite Index (^IXIC) shows to total NASDAQ volume. If in doubt about what volume is shown for a particular index, send me an email and I’ll try to find out for you. This volume limitation for indices does not adversely affect the market direction indicator, as described in the following “Ask Bill” question and answer:

Ask Bill O'Neil

Friday, May 2, 2003

"When checking for distribution days in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, do you use the market volume or the DJIA volume?"

To analyze the Dow, IBD uses the NYSE Composite volume rather than the Dow's volume. The idea is that when looking at a market index you want to examine market volume. It's for this same reason that IBD uses NYSE volume to gauge the S&P 500, which is made up mostly of NYSE stocks. The S&P 500 and Dow charts on also use NYSE volume.

Historical price and volume data is retrieve from Yahoo Finance. Supplemental CANSLIM information is retrieved from MSN Investor, and extra data retrieved from with a subscription to that site. If you find any discrepancy between the data in Charts and those sites, please let me know and I will look into it.

Conclusion

I hope you find Charts useful. If you have any suggestions for improvement or if you find any problems, please let me know.

Please Register

Please register via one of these methods:

1. Send 14.95$ via PayPal to charts@. Please visit , click "Send Money", and follow the instructions. Please include your handheld’s Palm User ID in the payment so that I can send you your registration code. To find your Palm User ID, start the HotSync application on the handheld, the Palm User ID is at the top right. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU TYPE IT EXACTLY, WITH CAPITALIZATION, PUNCTUATION, AND SPACING. IF NOT, THE REGISTRATION CODE I SEND YOU WILL BE INCORRECT.

2. Send me an email at charts@ to make other arrangements that may be more convenient for you.

-----------------------

[pic]

Figure 1a

[pic]

Figure 1b

[pic]

Figure 7

[pic]

Figure 2

[pic]

Figure 9

[pic]

Figure 8

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download