Technical Analysis of stocks, bonds, commodities and other securities, is the art of predicting future price movements (for the security) based on the study of past price and volume movements. Starting with historical open-high-low-close-volume data for a given security, technical analysis consists of applying one or more functions to that data, creating an indicator which predicts the future trend of the security, whether it be up, down or flat. Buy and sell actions for the security are then decided based on the indicator.
Using the Quinn-Curtis Technical Charts for Stocks, a user will choose a stock, and a time frame to analyze. The historical stock data will be displayed as a stock chart, usually an OHLC plot, or a candlestick plot. The user will have the option a applying a selection of time-invariant transfer functions to the data, producing additional charts which will indicate buy or sell signals on inspection. In some cases, an indicator will overlay the existing OHLC chart, and in others they will be displayed in a synchronized window under the main OHLC chart.
The software has three major major plotting areas: a zoom window, a primary chart window, and secondary indicator window area consisting of one or more charts. Typical shots are shown in the screen shots. The small chart at the top is the Zoom control for the chart below, which is the Primary technical chart window. The smaller windows under that the are the Secondary technical indicators. Both the Primary chart, and all of the Secondary charts, synchronize to the Zoom control.
Using the Zoom window, the user can use the mouse or touch screen to define the starting and ending dates used in the Primary chart window. The window can be panned left to right for fast access a particular time frame.
The Primary chart can display stock market data in a variety of formats: open-high-low-close, candlestick, line plot, scatter plot, bar plot, mountain plot, candlestick-volume, Point and Figure plot, and Renko plot. Up to three stocks can be compared, using a linear, logarithmic, or normalized y-axis scale. The Primary chart dynamically auto-scales to the displayed data. All features of the Primary chart are synchronized with the Zoom window.
The Primary chart can also have a selection of technical indicator overlays: simple moving averages, exponential moving averages, moving average bands, Bollinger bands, and Parabolic SAR.
There is a small set of technical analysis drawing objects which can be placed in the Primary chart. These are trend lines , a financial Fibonacci object, horizontal and vertical data markers, arrows, and two types of labels for annotations.
Underneath the Primary chart you can display additional, technical indicator, charts. The Secondary charts displays technical indicators which are best displayed in their own chart area, usually because they use a y-axis coordinate system which is not the same as the primary chart.
The following techncial indicators are currently supported: Average Directional Indicator, Momentum Rate of Change (ROC), Relative Strength (RSI), Stochastic (Fast and Slow), Williams %R, Moving Average, Convergence/Divergence (MACD), and Volume charts.
The software uses EOD (End of Day) stock market data, and economic indices, acquired from the data provider Quandl (www.quandl.com). Up to 30 years of historical data is provided for more than 3000 stocks, updated daily. The user can manage up to five different portfolios of 20 stocks each.
All user interaction is optimized for use with both a mouse or a touch screen.
Charts can be printed and saved as image files.
