Graphs


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From the Summary page it is possible to display a graph depicting the fluctuations of stock prices during the course of the day. To display the graph, press the Graph button for the symbol to view. A window with the graph is displayed. Press Close to dismiss the window when you are done. You can not use other parts of Stock Watcher's functionality while a graph is shown.

Data to display the graph is accumulated during the course of the day. The number of plot points on the graph depends on how often the ticker is refreshed. The more often it is refreshed, the more data points are accumulated. The data is saved periodically to disk so that if for some reason you need to stop and restart Stock Watcher, part of the day's data is still available when the graph is drawn.

You can configure the look of the graph by modifying certain options (accessible in the Options | Graph menu). You can modify the width and the height of the graph, the start time and the end time of data acquisition, the save frequency and the reset interval.

The start time and the end time determine when data should be gathered for displaying the graph. Normally, you should set these times to coincide with the opening and the closing of the stock markets. You should also allow some latency time since a lot of Web sites return stock quotes which are about 15 minutes late.

The save frequency determines how often data should be written to disk. After accumulating the amount of data points specified, data is written to disk. The data for a symbol is written out to $env(HOME)/.stockwatcher/$symbol.data.

The reset interval is the point at which all graph data is reset to zero. The value of the reset interval determines how many minutes before the start time of data acquisition at which graph data should be reset to zero. When Stock Watcher fetches data from a site, it determines if the current time is within the number of minutes specified by the reset interval. If so, the data fetched is not stored to disk and all existing graph data is deleted.

Resetting graph data will work correctly if Stock Watcher is running during the reset interval. Otherwise, the graph will show incorrect values and the graph points will go back in time. To correct this problem, all the data for all the graphs can be cleared by selecting Graph | Clear. To clear the data for a specific graph, bring up the graph and click the Clear button.

A correct reset interval will depend on the values of the ticker delay, the refresh delay, and the number of symbols monitored. A longer ticker delay, a longer refresh delay and a greater number of symbols will require a longer reset interval.

Graph data is acquired only for symbols on which there is at least one transaction. If you want to generate graphs for symbols on which you have no real transactions, one way to do so is to create fake transactions. This will add a line for the symbol in the Summary page and will acquire graph data during the course of the day for that symbol.

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