March 9th 2014: Some cool charting tools, tips & tricks (that might not have heard of).

I'm one of those guys who likes to tinker with stuff.  This holds true whether I'm out in a boat messing around with fishing gear or building something useful out of wood or playing around with stock charts.

Here's some of the cool charting tools on Stockcharts that you might not be familiar with....

#1.  PPO.  PPO stands for "Percentage Price Oscillator" and has the same basic construction of MACD.  The key distinction is that PPO is percentage-weighted and MACD is price-weighted.  This small difference becomes really important when looking at charts that experience a large price gain/loss.  In the example below, you can see a chart of a hot stock right now, PLUG.  MACD is making new highs with price, but PPO is not (a potentially bearish divergence).  You can also see the squeeze that MACD takes at very small prices (<$1) which makes signals harder to see.  In effect, MACD is squeezed and stretched simply by the price-weighting nature of the MACD formula.  PPO seeks to normalize MACD by simply dividing MACD by the slow EMA (middle number).  For more info on PPO, see this link...
http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?st=ppo&id=chart_school:technical_indicators:price_oscillators_pp

Also, in the PLUG chart below, I removed the signal line (and corresponding histogram) from MACD/PPO by setting the signal line parameter (last number) to "0" or "1".  It's really just an easier, more quantifiable way to look at EMA crossover's and the spread between them but I find it very useful.

#2.  VWAP.  VWAP stands for Volume Weighted Average Price.  The way this indicator is designed makes it best suited for intraday charts, but it has other applications.   VWAP starts collecting data price & volume data when a vehicle opens and stops when it closes for the day.  Looking at VWAP over multiple days shows pops and drops associated with the day-to-day reset (especially gap ups/downs).  However, it serves two very useful purposes: it's a real-time, volume-weighted smoothing function of price bars and it highlights oversold conditions when price trades below VWAP.  These features make it useful to me for confirming crossover (MA's, EMA's, BB's, etc.) and replaces an overbought/oversold oscillator for intraday adds.  It's the dark green line in the PLUG chart below which tracks closely with price (but not exactly).

For more info on VWAP:

http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?st=vwap&id=chart_school:technical_indicators:vwap_intraday

#3. Bullish Percent Index and Invisible bars.  The Bullish% of an index is simply the # of stocks on a P&F buy signal divided by the total # of stocks in that index.  Sometime in late 2013, I noticed that the bullish percentage indexes on Stockcharts stopped being only available as of end-of-day data and started being populated in real-time intraday.  For example, now you can look at $BPSPX on a 15-minute cloud chart to confirm a breakout on the daily without waiting until after the market closes to get $BPSPX (EOD) data.

Here's a chart that I made using "invisible" bars and EMA(1) signal line (which serves to smooth out the intraday bullish percent data).  The "invisible" setting for price bars removes the noise from the choppy bullish percent ratio as "chunks" of stocks pop to new buy signals.

For more info on Bullish Percent:

http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:bullish_percent_inde

For more of my charts, check out my public chart list on Stockcharts.com...
http://stockcharts.com/public/1109955