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How to post a chart in four easy steps

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Joe Blow

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I see a lot of people asking others to post charts for them.

Posting charts is an extremely simple process and there is absolutely no reason why people can't be posting their own. Here is how you do it in four easy steps:

1. Go here: http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/
2. Type in the ASX code preceeded by AU: (e.g. AU:BHP) and then click 'Basic Chart' or 'Advanced Chart' depending on your preference.
3. Adjust the time frame of the chart using the drop down box then place your mouse pointer over the chart, right click and select 'Save Image As' and save the image file to your PC. You may wish to rename the file to something more recognisable.
4. Before submitting your post, click on the 'Manage Attachments' button in the 'Additional Options' section just below the 'Submit Reply' button and upload the file from your PC.

Submit your post and Voila!.... the chart will magically appear in your post.

So those asking others to post charts for them... please take the minute or two it takes to learn this process and start posting your own. It's easy.
 
Joe Blow said:
Here is how you do it in four easy steps. It's easy.
Click to expand...
that's all right for you educated folks who can count to four!
PS thanks - suddenly a picture
PS Joe, any recommendations (easiest software / shareware maybe) for marking them up?
 
2020hindsight said:
PS Joe, any recommendations (easiest software / shareware maybe) for marking them up?
Click to expand...

2020 - I must admit I'm not familiar with the process involved in marking up the charts with commentary. I'm one of those Old Skoolerz who would just comment in the post.

I'm sure someone who is a master at it will chime in soon enough!
 
I'm no master, but I use MS Paint to draw on my charts. Open paint, and then go to 'file' and 'open' and then find the chart you have saved to your computer. The tools for drawing and text are pretty basic and aren't that difficult to use. Then save your chart as a bitmap or a GIF file to attach to your post. Bitmaps are clearer but take up more space. GIFs lose a bit of colour like this one below.
 

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Vista has a really useful tool, called the 'Snipping Tool'.

Basically, you start up the program, drag the mouse over any part of the screen you want to capture, and then save your screen capture as a jpg, etc.

Don't have to worry about cropping or anything else, very nice tool.
 
Does anyone know where you can get a chart of hourly fluctuations in a share price (as against daily, last close etc?) I used to get it with directshares, (based on 10 minute intervals) but no longer

You could sit back at the end of the day and say - " see that pointed mountain top ? that's where I bought! - and see that trough... " lol
 

I find if you save it as PNG, it posts a clear image and not as big as Bitmaps
 
2020hindsight said:
Does anyone know where you can get a chart of hourly fluctuations in a share price (as against daily, last close etc?)
Click to expand...

doh, Apologies for my post - so damned stupid.
As someone kindly informed me on PM, (thanks , sorry, accidentally wiped it before thanking you) , all you do is pick "hourly" from the left hand options box, and there's your chart on hourly movements. (or more frequent still )

i.e. To get "minute-by-minute" (sorta - no doubt a bit of a delay) you just amend step 3 below to read ...
"adjust both the time frame and the frequency using the drop down boxes ... etc "

 
so here's BHP minute by minute for last Friday for instance.
I'm probably the only one here that didn't know that - but I post it nonetheless.

OF COURSE , you have to compare volume with the minute by minute price - too easy for some manipulator out there to sell 50 shares (or 5 shares in the case of BHP) just to deceive the newbies (like I was two months ago lol)

And second graph is every 5 minutes for last week.
I would love to know if for instance there is a profit to be made by every day buying at say 11.55am ( before investors take lunch at work) , and selling at 1 pm ?

But you will see each day represents a "saucer", IN THE VOLUME GRAPH _- and (surprise surprise) most of the trading happens early and late . sorry if this is boring you lol. (and btw, no doubt , as soon as you assume a rule such as that , you'll back your bet, and it will be the day that's the exception to said rule )

Likewise the candlestix are shortest at lunch while all the poker players try to stare each other down lol. Prior to deciding to "cut and run", or "double you punk" etc later in the day .
 

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yet another woops
that previous graph was hourly for the 5 days of last week.

This one is the 5 minute version :-

And also the hourly graph is deceptive for volume - for instance it suggests that there is most activity at 10am and 3pm - damn all at 4pm. BUT IN FACT , you only get the true picture with the 5 minute intervals . frequency. - plenty of activity at 3.45pm if not between 3.45 - 3.55 - then a spike at 4pm (obviously the mopping up after close - like the pub )

and damn all at lunchtime - So my theory about making money by assuming "consistent and predictable trading trends at lunch time" are probably wrong (as usual)

LATE EXTRA - lol - look at the hourly one, every day last week the sell price went down for the "noon hour " - whatever that is exactly ( 12 - 1 you'd assume surely)

NOT ONLY did it go down, but had you shorted BHP at 12 noon, there was plenty of opportunity to "buy" in at the bottom of the candle - just so long as yuo "bought" by 1pm lol.
Final comment
a) DYOR
b) Anyone who uses this system has rocks in their head .
 

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PS I'm finding it pretty quick to post a chart simply by
a) displaying it on the screen (using Bigcharts - " what a GREAT site!! " said the blind man emerging from 12 months of darkness, lol - in my defence, I used to rely on directshares ) -
b) pressing Alt+ Print Screen
c) open Irfanview
d) Cntrl + V to paste
e) draw outline box around the chart
f) Edit > Crop
g) file > save as > "BHP.jpg"
then use manage attachments to put it into post
Again I'm sure most of you already knew this (and thanks to whoever introduced me to Irfanview - really easy shareware and free.)
 
PS the advantage of using a screen dump (alt+print screen) to make the photo is that the size is sorted out - i.e. what you end up with is exactly the same size as the "outline box" you draw in the course of cropping the photo out of the screen dump . - and efficient on size of file - perhaps others will criticise the quality, but I would have thought good enough - eg the graphs below show minute-by-minte price, and look lear enough imo - and I would have thought that bitmaps were pretty greedy on kB without gaining much.

The size (width) can of course be modified . In Irfanview you go to image > resize . Lock aspect ratio, pick a length or breadth etc ( dead easy) . The size ( kB, mB etc can further be modified if you wish but you would only do so after the screendump and after setting the width - another advantage here is that you would almost never have to adjust the file resoltion down to meet the max file size there (whatever it is these days )

Note that total width or one photo (or multiple graphs on same line) is around...

(here I pause tocheck 840 pixels or so. This one is 838:-
Possibly others might correct me here and say it's a bit wider .

AHH Now that's interesting
seems that wide photos are now self adjusted down to 850 wide.
For example the following photos started off withwidths of 838, 85-, 860, 900 respectively.

HENCE I would still propose discussion around using screendump as being efficient, because these are only 12, 12, 13, 14
kB each ( as I enlarged them -

but nothing was achieved (as you can see) by going from 850 wide to 900 wide ( and 12kB to 14kB) .

Final minor comment.
It would seem that text is distorted / fuzzy as soon as you enlarge ( or probably as soon as you reduce) the width of a photo cropped from a screendump. Stands to reason I guiess if you think aboutit.
 

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Hello Joe,


Just wondering if you would consider increasing the size limits for charts.

Doubling the size would be great if possible since even when I try to post 640 x 480 charts (as opposed to the more desirable 800 x 600 which presents more clearly) many of my more detailed charts exceed the size limit (more often than not), even when I set the resample filter to the lightest setting to cut down on data (greatly reducing the detail and legability too).

It forces me to either not post, or to have to post multiple charts with different detail (effectively defeating the purpose of the size limit, totalling much more than the limit).

I wonder if others have found this too?

Even a 50% increase would get help…



Regards



Magdoran
 

Howdy Mag,

you could always use a file uploading site to get slightly bigger charts if you want.

I use tinypic for this kind of thing-

http://tinypic.com/

Simply upload onto the site the same way you would for ASF, then copy and paste the IMG code to the end of your post.

Cheers mate
 
Thanks Prof,


Nice idea.

The problems I’ve found with this approach though is that if the original work is deleted for some reason on the other site (which has happened to me on other forums where posting charts is done by this method) then at some point in the future, the information is lost for that post.

Also, it is a pain in the butt to do it this way (yup doing that bit extra is a strain, hehehe) when it would be far simpler to just have a slightly larger acceptable data size and just post charts via the conventional method, and not risk losing the image at some point in the future, or having to give up posting the relevant chart because you can’t make it fit the data limitation.

Anyway, just thought I’d raise the issue since I have found a fair percentage of my charts just miss out on the limit, or I have to shrink them down so much, a lot of the detail is missed, hence have to truncate the detail to make them fit… then they are that far under the limit it is silly…

Regards,


Magdoran
 

Hi Mag,

I have increased the file size limit on image attachments to 150K. This should be more than enough for most purposes.

I have left the maximum image dimensions at 875x1000 pixels as I don't like it when attached images distort the width of the forum for those on screen resolutions less than 1280x1024, so I would prefer that people kept their images to those dimensions. Incidentally, this forum software will now automatically resize larger images so if you have an image that is 1000 pixels wide, when you attach it it should automatically resize it to 875 pixels.

I understand that on the odd occasion an image larger than 875 pixels wide may be necessary. In this case I suggest using a free image hosting service like Photobucket and then just inserting the image into the post using the
 
 
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