CHARTING
Quick Start
To create a chart, click the “Charts” button on the left edge of Lighthouse Trader. The cursor will be positioned in the “enter symbol” box where you may type the ticker symbol of the chart you want to see. Click the “Add” button to add that symbol to the chart. If all you want to see is the OHLC and volume data, just click the “Generate Chart” button at the bottom right corner of the window and your chart will be displayed.
Click on the following thumbnail to see an enlarged example.
Each time you click the “Charts” button on the left edge of Lighthouse Trader, a new charting window will be created. You can create and view any number of charts at the same time. Just click on the “Chart” tabs along the top edge of Lighthouse Trader to switch between charts.
Finding Symbols
If you are unsure of the ticker symbol for your stock, click the “Find” button (beside the “enter symbol” box). If you don’t see the “Find” button, be sure you have clicked the main “Dates, Symbols & Templates” tab (near the top of the left-hand pane).
In the “Find Symbol” dialog box you will see a list of ticker symbols and company names, sorted by symbol. You can re-sort the list by company name by clicking on the “Name” column header. Then scroll through the list until you see symbol you are looking for.
Click on the following thumbnail to see an enlarged example.
If you know only a portion of the company name, you can enter it in the text-entry box near the top of the dialog box. The characters you enter may be any part of a company name – you do not have to enter the starting characters of the name. After entering part of a company name, click the “Cut Back List” button to see only those companies whose names contain the characters you just entered. If there are still too many companies in the list, you can enter another fragment of the company name and click the “Cut Back List” button again. The list of companies will be shortened to include only those names that include both of the fragments you typed in.
To re-display the complete list of companies, click the “Reset List” button.
When you have found your symbol, click on the row containing the symbol you want and then click the “OK” button. The symbol will appear in the “enter symbol” text box. Remember to click the “Add” button now in order to add the new symbol to your chart.
You can choose any number of symbols to include in your chart. Each symbol will appear in its own chart area in the result window, arranged vertically to make it easy for you to visually correlate the price action for each symbol.
Finding Index Symbols
While you are in the “Find Symbol” dialog box, you can also search for index symbols. If you want to find an index symbol (eg. “SP500”), click on the “Index symbols” tab at the top of the dialog box. You will see a list of all index symbols loaded into the database. You can search the this list in the same way as you would search the company name list.
Click on the following thumbnail to see an enlarged example.
Dates
By default, charts show data up to and including the last day loaded into the database. If you want to view a chart containing older data, you can set the ending date in the “Choose ending date” box. This allows you to clearly view limited segments of price history without compressing the bars together so much that they become indistinguishable from one another. This feature can be useful when you want to sharpen your technical analysis skills by evaluating stocks without being biased by seeing what they did beyond a certain date in time.
Chart Duration
You can check one or more boxes to display daily, weekly and monthly charts, all in the same result window.You can specify a different amount of data to be displayed for each of these bar durations.
Selecting Indicators
Note: you must choose one or more symbols before you can select indicators.
Click on the “Indicators” tab (near the top of the left-hand pane) to choose the indicators you want to see in your chart. Simply highlight one of the indicators (by clicking on it) and then drag that indicator over to the right-hand pane and drop it where you want it to appear.
For example, if you want to see a simple moving average on your chart, highlight the “moving average, simple” indicator, then drag it to the right and drop it on the “chart” line.
Click on the following thumbnail to see an enlarged example.
Exactly WHERE do I drop the indicators?
It makes a difference! You have three choices.
- If you want to add another line to an existing chart, drop the new indicator on the word “chart.” This is what you will normally do for indicators such as moving averages and bollinger bands.
- If you want to create an additional chart, drop the new indicator on the ticker symbol for which you want the additional chart. This is what you typically do for indicators such as ADX, MACD, stochastic oscillators, etc.
- ADVANCED: Some indicators allow you to specify their “input data source.” For example, normally moving averages are based on closing prices. However, you can drop the “Data: Low” item onto a moving average in the right-hand pane and now that moving average will be based on the low price of the day rather than the closing price of the day.
If you make a mistake and want to remove an indicator, highlight that indicator (in the “Selected Symbols and Indicators” window) and then click on the “trash can” icon. Or, you can right-click on the indicator and choose “remove”.
You can rearrange charts and indicators by dragging and dropping those items within the “Selected Symbols and Indicators” window. You can also move charts and indicators up or down amongst their peers by highlighting the item and clicking on the up or down arrows (in the middle of the window).
Setting Indicator Options
Some indicators offer one or more user-definable parameter settings. For example, the moving average indicator allows you to choose the number of days in the moving average. Every indicator provides default settings, but you can over-ride these settings by right-clicking on the indicator in the “Selected Symbols and Indicators” window and choosing “Set Parameters.” Or you can highlight the indicator and click on the “Set Preferences icon near the bottom-middle of the window.
Click on the following thumbnail to see an enlarged example.
ADVANCED: Some indicators display two or more lines on the chart. Examples of this are bollinger bands and the ADX indicator. If you specify one of these indicators as an input data source for another indicator, how does it know which value to use? You can use the default setting, or you can over-ride that choice by right-clicking on the indicator (eg. ADX) and selecting “Choose Statistic.”
Creating your own composite indicators
FOR THE ADVANCED USER.
A “composite” indicator is an indicator based on several other indicators and data sources, combined mathematically in the manner you prescribe.
With a few simple drag-and-drop’s, you can create unique new composite indicators. There is no script language to learn. You don’t even need to touch your keyboard!
As mentioned above, some indicators allow you to specify one or more “inputs.” For example, the moving average indicator will accept one input, and compute a moving average based on that input. The default input for the moving average indicator is the “closing” price, but you could compute the moving average of any indicator or data item.
Lighthouse Trader provides a number of mathematical operators you can use to combine existing indicators to explore your own indicator ideas.
Here is an example to show you how easily it can be done. Let’s say you want to see the daily trading volume weighted by the closing price for the day.
Click on the following thumbnail to see an enlarged example.
- Create a new chart for the ticker symbol of your choice. To do this, click on the “Dates, Symbols & Templates” tab, enter the ticker symbol, and click the “Add” button.
- Click on the “Indicators” tab to view the list of available indicators.
- Drag the “Arithmetic: Multiply” item and drop it on your ticker symbol at the top of the “Selected Symbols and Indicators” window.
- Drag the “Data: Volume” item and drop it on the “multiply” item in the “Selected Symbols and Indicators” window.
- Drag the “Data: Close” item and drop it on the “multiply” item.
- Click the “Generate Chart” button and you will now see volume weighted by closing price.
Now, let’s say you examine the chart and decide that you need to smooth your new weighted volume indicator with a 9-period exponential moving average. Here’s how – without having to recreate your weighted volume indicator from scratch.
- Drag the “Indicator: moving average, exponential” item and drop it on the
“chart: [mul]” item.
- In the “Selected Symbols and Indicators” window, drag the “mul” item immediately beneath the “chart: …” line and drop it on top of the new “9 ema” item.
- Click “Generate Chart” to see the new composite indicator.
As you can see, indicators and arithmetic operators are arranged hierarchically to show the logical “flow” of data from one indicator or operator or data source into the next. Arithmetic items which utilize two inputs will display those two inputs as children immediately below that arithmetic item.
Viewing Charts
After you click the “Generate Chart” button, the focus will automatically shift to the “R” results tab where you will see the new chart. If you have requested multiple time frames and symbols, you may need to scroll the window up/down or left/right to view all requested data.
Click on the following thumbnail to see an enlarged example.
A vertical cursor line will appear as you move the mouse over the chart area. The legend will show exact numbers for every indicator for the date/time where the cursor line is positioned. You can lock the cursor line on a particular date by clicking once. Unlock the cursor line by clicking again anywhere in the chart.
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