We have put together a collection of market indicators and track them to help you gauge the direction of the market. Interactive analysis templates covering DuPont analysis return on equityvaluing stocks the Warren Buffett way, and more to come. Security analysis falls into two broad categories—fundamental and technical. The goal of fundamental analysis is to analyze the characteristics of a company in order to estimate its value. Technical analysis, on the other hand, does not concern itself with the value of the underlying security. Instead, it focuses strictly on the price movements. By analyzing the supply and demand of a security, technicians attempt to forecast its future price movement or trend. The tools of technical analysis are charts and technical indicators, which help to identify patterns that suggest future price movements. Those looking for technical analysis and charting software will perhaps find a more diverse collection than that offered in other categories of investment software. Given all the choices, it is vital that you identify the type s of analysis you wish to perform as well as the securities and markets you wish to track and then purchase an appropriate program. Before making your decision, however, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the features and functionalities of a variety of packages to find the one that suits your needs. We have focused on those programs offering the functionality sought by the average technician. At a minimum, all of the programs covered here handle stocks, investor charting capabilities, system have a library of technical indicators. You can use these programs for end-of-day analysis, and they also handle intraday analysis on either a real-time or a delayed basis. The comparison grid examines the key features you should expect to find with a full-featured charting and technical analysis platform. Our discussions here are based on the latest versions system the software available at the time of this writing late November. It is always a good idea to verify features with the company before buying. With technical analysis, the bulk of data used in the analysis process is price and volume data. The following are some of the typical data issues to consider when evaluating a technical analysis and charting program and tools seeking out a compatible data vendor. Price and volume data, the key inputs of technical analysis, can be delivered to the end user on either an end-of-day EOD or intraday basis. End-of-day data summarizes activity during the course of the trading day. In contrast, intraday data provides periodic updates throughout the trading day on either a real-time or a delayed basis. A premium is usually paid for this more timely data. Ultimately, your investment time horizon will dictate whether you require end-of-day or intraday data. Investors with longer time horizons should be able to make do with end-of-day or delayed intraday data, while short-term investors and traders would want to consider a real-time data feed in order to more closely monitor market movements. Technical analysis programs that use data from third-party providers require you to choose a data provider separately from trading program software. The programs highlighted here vary in their support of data vendors. Some programs, such as TC from Worden Brothers, rely on a sole data source. Others give users a wide variety of compatible data vendors from which to choose. When there is a broader selection of data vendors, you have a better chance of finding one that meets your exact data needs—and budget. The comparison grid indicates tools data vendors each program supports. Some programs can automatically collect price and volume data en masse from free sources, such as Yahoo! If you already have a database of historical price and volume data, it may be worthwhile to note the data formats that can be imported into a given program. This functionality can also save you time and money, since you do not have to start over from scratch. MetaStock and TC are two industry standards when it comes to data formatting, and many programs support the importing of such data. In addition, ASCII and CSV text formats are popular. Since the accuracy of charting and technical analysis is predicated on the accuracy of the underlying price and volume data, it is important that the data you are using correctly reflect certain events or, at a minimum, that you can easily adjust the data yourself. Such events include stock splits as well as dividend and distribution payments. Programs that automatically adjust for stock splits will back-adjust any historical data you already system when a stock split occurs. While a chart that has been adjusted for dividends or distributions does not reflect the historical prices at which you could have bought and sold the security, it does reflect the equivalent prices at which it traded. Such adjustments allow the user to more accurately track price performance over time. All three of our top picks will automatically adjust data for stock splits, dividends and distribution payments. Chart analysis is a cornerstone of technical analysis. Tools fact, many technicians rely solely on what they see on a chart when attempting to predict future price movements. There are several popular chart types used by technicians, and the programs here differ in the types of charts they offer. The most common chart types are line and bar charts, and all of the programs in this comparison offer these two chart types. Line charts plot a single price point—usually the closing price—over time. In contrast, bar charts may show up to four data points for a given period—the open, high, low and closing OHLC prices for a day, week, month or other period. A proper discussion of these charts is beyond the scope of this article. However, you can find articles dealing with charting in the online Computerized Investing archive www. A chart template or layout allows you to specify the characteristics of a chart, such as the time period displayed, data periodicity—such as daily, weekly or monthly—chart type, and any indicators or drawing tools you wish to be trading. Programs that allow you to create custom templates generally allow you to save them for future use as well. Templates are especially useful if you view multiple securities in the same manner. Instead of having to specify the chart characteristics for each security, all you need to do is specify the security and apply the template, and the program does the rest. The number and type of indicators built into a program are important factors to consider when selecting a technical analysis program. However, the raw number of indicators should not be the sole consideration—more is not necessarily better. Instead, the emphasis needs to be on ensuring that the program includes the indicators important to your analysis. When available, the comparison grid has links to the websites of the various software companies where you can see a list of the technical indicators each program offers. Beyond a set of predefined indicators with default values used in calculating them, the ability to modify indicators to fit your particular trading needs and style is a useful feature. Modifications allow you to adjust factors such as the number of time periods used in calculating a given indicator. For example, the most common time periods for a daily moving average are 50 and days, but programs allowing modification of indicators give you the opportunity to adjust the period to one you are more interested in. Some of the more advanced programs allow you to create custom indicators. In generic terms, screening is the method of taking a large universe of securities and narrowing it down to a more manageable number with similar characteristics. In the context of technical screening, you are isolating securities that exhibit certain technical properties, such as price or volume behavior, moving average breakouts, or overbought or oversold conditions based on various indicators. Users are typically able to specify both the universe they wish to screen and the criteria they wish to use; the program will then generate a list of securities matching the criteria. These events can include meeting a specific value for a technical indicator, generating a buy or sell signal through a technical system, or even violating a trendline. These alerts can take the form of on-screen pop-up windows, email alerts, or messages sent to a cell phone or hand-held device. Many traders develop trading systems—sets of trading rules for when to buy, sell, short or cover—based on technical indicators, and they use a technical analysis program to indicate automatically when these rules are triggered. The rules underlying a trading system can involve a single indicator or a collection of confirming indicators matched to specific market conditions. Generally, you tend to find trading systems in the higher-end technical analysis packages. You can modify these systems to match your own trading patterns and the securities you track. Advanced traders may also want to develop their own technical trading systems. When developing a new trading system, it is useful to test it using historical price and investor data to get an idea as to how it may perform going system. To backtest a system, users specify a time period in the past, and the test provides an indication of how the trading system would have performed over that period. Programs allow users to account for such items as slippage the amount by which a security price may move between the time you place an order and when it is actually filled and broker commissions. Other items to consider are stop-loss methods, user-defined entry and exit points, and whether you wish to trade on long positions, short positions, or both. The final element of system backtesting is optimization, where the program identifies the optimal variables that generate the highest gain or smallest loss for a trading system over the test period. However, be aware of the popular saying regarding optimization: You can torture the data until it tells you what you want to hear. When analyzing the overall effectiveness of a system, it is useful to have access to system reports that provide such measures as rate of return, performance relative to buy-and-hold, maximum drawdown, and the profitability of each individual trade. These reports allow you to see the transactions you would have made if you were following the system and measure the success profitability and riskiness of the strategy over the testing period. The ability to rank and compare the performances of trading systems is a valuable tool for finding out how different systems perform in different market conditions. Technical analysis programs tend to be some of the more complicated software packages you will run across. Therefore, you want to make sure you have the resources to get to know the program. Through their respective websites tools online help systems, each offers multi-media tutorials or guides that help you navigate through the programs. Long gone are the days of receiving printed manuals. Now, when you run into trouble using a software package, you can usually refer to a help system within the program. All of the programs in this comparison offer, at a minimum, free email support. At these forums, you can exchange ideas relating to trading and gain insight on how to get the most from your technical analysis package. Furthermore, the Mac version offers the same features and functionality as the Windows version, a rarity among investment analysis software. The program satisfies the needs of active technical traders, offering intraday analysis, several different chart types, custom indicator and trading systems creation, system optimization, order placement, and portfolio management functions. The program also supports one of the largest collections of data vendors of any technical analysis package. The Standard edition trading charting, predefined technical indicators and drawing tools, custom instruments, and news monitoring. With RTL, users can perform custom scans, create custom indicators and trade signals, and build advanced indicators. In addition, system provides candlestick pattern recognition. The system also tracks transactions—such as cash, dividends, commissions and interest—in order to calculate the annualized rate system return for each open position. However, its usefulness is limited by the fact that you are only able to download about three years of daily data per stock, definitely not enough for backtesting of a trading system, let alone analyzing long-term trends. The scan function allows users to identify trading signals being generated. Scans can be based on technical indicators, fundamental data, and current or historical prices and can be run using tick or minute data as well as daily, weekly and monthly data. Once a scan is completed, the results are presented in a quote page that can be sorted on a number of data elements. Users can organize trading signals into a set of trading rules and then backtest these rules over any desired time period. To analyze the results of backtesting, this module also offers detailed reports. The trading system optimization feature allows users to backtest ranges of values for the variables used in the trading system to find the optimal values and periodicity. Once a trading system has been developed, backtested, and optimized, trading system deployment allows for the plotting of trading systems on a chart on a real-time or end-of-day basis. You can deploy tools systems as indicators on a chart with buy and sell signals. Furthermore, the program will automatically update your portfolio to account for the trades you make. Mac users will also appreciate having such a robust system at their disposal. The ability to download free historical data from Yahoo! Finance is another welcome and money-saving offering. Furthermore, Linn Software has done an excellent job of producing online tools, including an array of video tutorials, to educate their users on how to get the most from the software. MetaStock—from Equis International, a Thomson Reuters company—has been a leader in the technical analysis software arena for over a quarter of a century. Offering a comprehensive collection of technical indicators, charting capabilities, and system development and optimization tools, coupled with unrivaled ease of use, MetaStock has established itself as one of the most complete end-of-day programs of its kind. You can also create chart templates that allow you to apply the same set of indicators and studies to different securities. You can even create a custom default template that is always used when you open a new chart. MetaStock comes with over technical indicators and line studies. This is in contrast to standard indicators, which use a fixed look-back period, such as a day moving average. Users can view a list of securities that are generating investor or sell signals or that have broken through some predefined system dealing with price or indicator. MetaStock also ships with a set of predefined scans, and you can create and save custom scans with the same programming language used to create custom indicators. These advisors—there are currently 70—help you interpret technical analysis signals. Expert alerts provide indications of when current market conditions meet your criteria. There are also Expert highlights that color-code individual prices or significant chart patterns. You can use these Expert systems to receive text, audio or video alerts when certain conditions are met. Using the indicator builder, you can also create your own market advisors. MetaStock ships with 50 trading systems and allows you to create your own, all of which can be backtested and optimized with the enhanced system tester. You can run one system on a single security, many systems on a single security, one system investor many securities, or multiple systems on multiple securities. Although MetaStock is an extremely robust analysis tool, its developers have also taken great pains to make it very user-friendly. The program offers a comprehensive on-board help system. In addition, the MetaStock and Equis websites offer user forums, free webinars online seminars and video tutorials, and real-time online support chat. With the Downloader you can import data in a variety of formats, including ASCII text and TC formats. MetaStock offers everything a seasoned trader needs—custom indicators, trading system development, backtesting, optimization and scanning capabilities. Despite its potentially intimidating lineup of features, MetaStock is also one of the most user-friendly programs we have ever run across. TC from Worden Brothers is our final top pick among technical analysis and charting software. The program tools a combination of solid charting and technical analysis capabilities, ease of use, and unique features, making it one of the most popular analysis tools on the trading today. This also allows you to run the program through a Web browser instead of installing it to your computer although this option is still available for Windows users. What does being online mean? Mac users can now run TC on Mac OS X. TC comes in end-of-day Gold and streaming real-time Platinum versions. Similar to MetaStock, TC only supports a proprietary data feed for direct data updating. The database itself contains over 5, U. The program comes with dozens of predefined watchlists, which allow you view a group of stocks such trading the NASDAQ index component stocks or the stocks currently held in the iShares Dow Jones U. There are also watchlists for Morningstar industry groups and subgroups. Investor you have selected a watchlist, run a slideshow of the charts for the symbols in the watchlist. You can also create and save custom watchlists. TC offers the basic chart types—bar, candlestick and line—along with an expanded library of over 70 technical indicators, including some proprietary indicators that are exclusive to the program. If you wish to go beyond the provided indicators, you can program your own. Personally, I feel that creating custom trading with TC is a bit clunky; it is not nearly as easy or intuitive as it is with MetaStock. You can run scans against the entire Worden universe or against subsets, such as industries or personal watchlists. Simultaneously, you can scan for long-term technical and fundamental conditions, as well as intraday conditions. The software comes with a dozen predefined scans, and users can save custom scans. Users will find predefined lists of index and industry components. The level of customization TC offers makes it extremely appealing. Users can design workspaces to suit their needs, with watchlists, charts, alerts, scans and more. You can link watchlists and charts so that you only need to select a symbol from the watchlist, and the respective charts in your workspace will reflect that symbol. Your options are almost limitless. StockFinder offers a broader library of over technical indicators along with company fundamental data, earnings estimates and analyst ratings. You can create your own indicators and backtest any indicator-based trading rule, but optimizing capabilities are not offered. Lastly, Platinum subscribers can connect to their TD Ameritrade, optionsXpress or Interactive Brokers account. StockFinder is not as intuitive as the rest of TC, but a collection of free webinars and other resources can help you fully understand the functionality offered. One of the more interesting Platinum features is that the software allows users to interact with each other. Platinum subscribers can join more than public and private chat rooms or create their own. Platinum subscribers can also upload files to the Platinum community as well as download files from other Platinum users. There are hours of webinars and video tutorials available online, with new events being offered all the time. There are also a variety of discussion forums where you can post questions regarding the program. In the future we will publish an expanded comparison grid online at ComputerizedInvesting. Subscribers to the weekly CI Email will be notified when this grid has been published. To sign up for this email, log onto AAII. Thank you for your unbiased critique of the 3 leaders in Technical Analysis Trading systems. In fact it is a brilliant and magnificent presentation. I only have experience with Worden's output I being their subscriber sincewhen there were no online services. They, like the others have evolved into a necessity since the personal computer was invented. Yet, as statistics are extrapolations into the future based on a small sample of a big universe, Virtual Reality can never catch up with Real future Reality. Thus,we investor and traders rely on you as an experienced observer to keep us updated. I have never used Investor RT. I have used the current version of Metastock EOD and TC V I am quite computer literate but just could not get along with Metastock -- which I owned for a couple of years. My use was confined to basic charting because of it and I never found anything easy about it. Also, the data costs get to be tedious on top of the software cost. I bought the Gold version of TC and have since thrown Metastock away. TC was easy to learn and is relatively inexpensive. I have many different screens set up to monitor different watchlists specifically. The sorting and filtering facility is great too. TC has many excellent free tutorials on the Worden website which anyone can view. They will give you a great feel for how the software works in addition to being a great educational resource. I also use TC to illustrate points in my personal blog. For me, the choice is TC hands down. Anthony Humpage Scottsdale AZ. We need more of these. I was an early user of TC but fell away. Long ago I tried Vector Vest, Invester Pro, Omni, and recently visual trader. I have not found a system that works for me. I like some of the recent upgrades to Vector so I may try again. Any comments or suggestions from you or fellow members? For the last 3 months I have tools working with MetaStock, Worden Brothers tc v All of the programs are tightly locked to prevent pirating -- too tightly I would say. I agree with Mr. Humpage's "just could not get along with Metastock" even though I too am quite computer literate. It also seemed sometimes to be akin to adware, anything of interest required an upgraded subscription. Sorting the universe of equities was also p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slow. I just finished another unsuccessful clean install -- the 5th, 8th, 13th I don't know how many, but definitely some Fibonacci number though I'm done trying. Worden Bros is my favorite. It is fast, fast, fast in sorting and charting stocks. The charts are very colorful and the colors are customizable allowing the color to convey important data. With some poking around I have highly adapted it to "speak to me". I have Platinum service which gives realtime data feed but not the Stock Finder module One strategic intraday entry paid for a year's subscription to the realtime data. Stock Investor Pro has an unbelievably rich database of fundamental data. It is an essential complement to all of these tech analytic investor and could clearly stand on its own for longer term investors. The fidelity program is also buggy. But the integration of order entry and the very rich fidelity research makes it a program that I will work to trading tuned. I have been checking out some intermediate to advanced books on tech analysis and TradeStation seems to be the standard: I'm going to check it out as well as the tc stock selector module before settling. ThorpThank you. You need to log in as a registered AAII user before commenting. Home How-To Articles Spreadsheets Investor Reviews Technical Analysis Mobile App Reviews Store CI Groups. What's New Market Dashboard Best of the Web PC Buyer's Guide Past CI Issues CI Member Discounts. CI Market Dashboard We have put together a collection of market indicators and track them to help you gauge the direction of the market. CI Analysis Worksheets Interactive analysis templates covering DuPont analysis return on equityvaluing stocks the Warren Buffett way, and more to come. The Top Technical Analysis and Charting Programs. Equis International Worden Brothers Inc. Telephone ; use Priority Code: AAII Website www. IQ, DTN IQFeed, DTN Market Access, eSignal, Interactive Brokers, Infinity Futures, Rithmic, TransAct Futures, Yahoo! Discussion M from FL posted over 5 years ago: M from FL posted over 5 years ago: Anthony Humpage from AZ posted over 5 years ago: Anthony Humpage Scottsdale AZ Dave from WA posted over 5 years ago: Dave Gregory Silvis from MN posted over 4 years ago: Create an account Log In. 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One moment he or she may be a carefree child, and then suddenly realize that they have been transformed into a mature adult by a powerful and traumatic experience.
Linux presents relatively few compatibility problems with older.
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One moment he or she may be a carefree child, and then suddenly realize that they have been transformed into a mature adult by a powerful and traumatic experience.
People against the death penalty say that we should not use it because of that very reason.