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ChartPro Limited Version 1.06L -------------------- Copyright 1990 By David W. Rettger ChartPro will chart data supplied by the user in a daily High-Low-Close bar format. Also, certain technical studies may be calculated from the data. The program comes in two parts. CHARTPRO.EXE is the charting portion of the package. DATAPRO.EXE is a routine designed to let the user easily input price data to the .PRO files used by ChartPro. Each of these programs is copyrighted. The author retains all rights to them. The Limited Versions are offered, as is, to the public on a shareware basis. That is to say, if you like the limited program version and intend to use it, you are expected to remit the program price of $25 to the author. If you do not pay, you should not use it. A version complete with additional technical studies is available on a 5.25" or 3.5" floppies for $50. This master version also comes with a discussion of each technical study. In either case, the author will try to answer questions about the program itself for registered users. (Please do not inquire about the interpretations of actual charts. Time limitations and personal liability preclude answers to such questions.) This offer or the price asked for the Master Version may change from time to time. I will try to maintain a copy of the latest Demo version of Chartpro, with the latest pricing on Compuserve. Look for it in the NAIC forum, under shareware. All correspondence should be sent to: David Rettger 5304 Johnson Avenue Western Springs, Il 60558 This limited version may be copied and distributed to other parties so long as all the accompanying files are distributed together, intact. Also, no fee may be charged for distribution other than a nominal sum to cover the price of a diskette and shipping costs, and in any event may not exceed five dollars. The limited version is a fully functional charting package and differs from the master package only in the number of technical studies provided and the completeness of the documentation. Some of the additional technical studies included in the master package are: Point and Figure Charts Williams %R Commodity Channel Index Line Oscillator Moving Average Convergence/Divergence Volume Weighted Moving Average Williams Accumulation/Distribution Index Lane's Fast and Slow Stochastics Moving Average Envelope Gann Fan Fibonacci Fan and Sup/Res Lines Bollinger Bands Weekly Charts Upon terminating the program, the limited version will prompt the user to register his use of the program. The master package does not have this prompt. Disclaimer: ----------- The author assumes no risk for trading losses incurred by users of ChartPro. A charting program does not provide "Winning Trades." At best, it will provide the user with a different perspective on a given trading vehicle. Two users looking at the same chart will usually have somewhat different interpretations. The program may give insights to a stock's trading patterns, etc., but the final decision is always up to the investor. Investing is inherently risky. These risks and profits are the investor's alone. Please consider your own financial position to determine if you should be trading securities. The data supplied with the program is intended to be used for demonstration purposes only. There is no guarantee that it is complete or accurate. For best results, depend on your own data. Using Chartpro -------------- ChartPro was written specifically for high resolution, color graphics. That means it requires EGA graphics capabilities. If you attempt to create a chart and the program blows out with an Illegal Function Call error, you probably do not have EGA and will not be able to use CHARTPRO. At present, no plans exist for making the program CGA compatible. Also, because it was compiled using Microsoft's QuickBasic software, it is limited to that product's capabilities. Hercules graphics are not supported and will not function with this product. It is assumed that this program will be run on a hard drive based system. It will run from floppy diskettes, but the limited availability of storage and the slow data transfer speed may impair its usefulness. ChartPro should reside in its own subdirectory but can be set up to run from the PATH if so desired. A batch file has been included for installing ChartPro. After "de-archiving" the program set, simply type "GO" to run the batch file. It will create two directories, \ChartPro\ and \Pro\. It will then copy the program and data files to the respective directories. If you do not want to use this batch file approach, you may create your own set of directories and use the DOS "SET" command to establish the location where ChartPro will look for its configuration files, etc. To do this, at the DOS prompt type: SET CHARTPRO=Drive:\Subdirectory\ where "Drive:" and "\Subdirectory\" describe the location you intend to use. Alternatively, this command my be put into the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Once the program is in the proper subdirectory, simply type CHARTPRO to begin its execution. Place both ChartPro and DataPro in this SET directory. Keep in mind that the program does not make room for long path names, etc. Keep the length of these path names under 12 characters. Technical Analysis: ------------------- Two schools of thought exist regarding stock or other investment selection decision making, Fundamental and Technical analysis. Fundamental analysis looks at the financial side of things. For stocks, one might consider a company's products, market share, sales, earnings and a whole host of other statistics. Technical analysis focuses on chart patterns and studies based on price, time, volume and the like. Over time I have found fundamental analysis to be very valuable. In a past life (that is, before I became a trader a the CBOT), I was an investment manager for a major insurance company. I studied company financial statements for a living. I believed the concept that markets followed a random walk movement, etc. I did not know what I was missing. Over the past several years, I have begun using technical analysis to augment the fundamental part. Fundamental analysis can identify wonderful companies or suggest interesting interest rate plays. Technical analysis is the road map that can give you clues toward when to buy or sell that good company. Take, for example, IBM. It is a leader in its industry, a company sure to turn profits for a long time to come. Big Blue is considered "Blue Chip", a safe haven when times get tough. That may be true, or not. Using 20-20 hindsight, it obviously was not a great buy at $180 per share. From 1987 to 1989, it acted more in line with some S&L's, losing about fifty percent of its value. This company is still a good company, but if you paid the highs for it or sat on your long position, you could have lost a bundle of money. Only those people who took the time to chart the stock, to follow it regularly, might have had a clue that the picture was not entirely rosy. To me, technical analysis becomes a timing tool. It is the road map that helps you get where you want to go. In the Chicago area, the Tri-State Tollway is a good road. You just do not want to be on it when everyone else is, all going the same direction. During the rush hour you need an alternate route or to just wait it out. Technical analysis can help you identify a rush coming. Hopefully, when everyone decides to sell (or buy), you will already be positioned or on the sidelines. Technical analysis does not always work. There is no magic formula that predicts the future. You have to look at the charts and make your own interpretation. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that all the professionals are doing it. If you want to play their game, you should at least be armed with some of the weapons that they are using. With this goal in mind, I wrote ChartPro. ChartPro: Main Menu ------------------- The first working menu permits you to enter a stock ticker symbol, beginning or ending dates, path information, or hit function keys to accomplish a few tasks. Use the cursor control keys to move the highlighted bar to the desired item. The first time you run ChartPro, you must set the Data File Path. If the data is on the C: drive in a subdirectory called DATA, you must enter "C:\DATA\". Enter the entire path name, placing a backslash ("\") at end of the path. The default data file extension is ".PRO". In fact, all data files for use with this program version should use the PRO extension. Future revisions may allow other data formats. If a valid stock ticker symbol, path and extension are displayed, you may hit <F10> to create a chart. Dates are not necessary. Before creating a chart, the path and other information are saved in a file called CHARTPRO.CFG in either the current directory or the directory named in the DOC "SET" command (hereinafter called the SET directory). Each time execution returns to the main menu area, the data in this file is read and the information is restored to the screen. (All this happens in a split second, so you may not even notice it.) If no dates were supplied prior to hitting <F10>, a chart will be created using up to the last 150 days' data. For entering dates, you have several options. If you want the last 300 days, enter "300" for the beginning date and leave the ending date blank. If you want to see a span of data from, say, the prior 300th day up to 20 days ago, enter "300" for the beginning date and "20" for the ending date. Calendar dates must be entered in the form "MO/DA/YR". Slashes MUST be used, not dashes, not backslashes, etc. A beginning date of 3/1/89 with no ending date will result in a chart of days from March 1, 1989 to the last date in the file. If an ending date was supplied, then the chart would span between the two dates. To erase the contents of the highlighted bar, simply hit the space bar once. Note: Do not mix numeric date references with the Mo/DA/Yr form. A beginning date of "300" and an ending date of "3/1/90" will not work. Also, if you enter an ending date or number, you must also enter a beginning date or number. Also, do not use Zero for an ending date. Hit <Esc> to terminate the program. Function Keys: -------------- The function keys are active only when the corresponding prompt is visible on the screen. Hitting <F1> will bring up a basic help menu with information about the Main Menu. The <F2> key will bring up the Go Elsewhere menu. The <F3> key will bring up a directory of all the "PRO" files in the specified data file path. <F10> creates a chart. At virtually any time, hit <Esc> to return to the previous menu. ChartPro: Elsewhere Menu ------------------------ This menu has four choices. They are: Return to ChartPro Go to DataPro Set Screen Colors Begin Automatic Chart Printing The first two are pretty obvious. DataPro is a separate program with which you enter data for the charts and is described below. Hitting <C> will select the Change Screen Color Menu. This has been provided so users can select the colors that will be displayed on menus and on the actual charts. I have to admit to being slightly color blind so you may find my color selections less than optimal. Feel free to change them. One warning, do not set the foreground text and background to the same color. Blue text on a blue background is in reality a blank blue screen. Colors are saved in a file called CHARTPRO.CLR in the SET directory. If you need to return to the defaults, simply erase this file. Described below is a method of saving charts to your hard drive. Any that have been saved may be "dumped" to the printer with the automatic chart printing feature. This means, you do not have to sit and wait for a chart to print before doing a new chart. The charts are saved in a series of four files, the names being based on the ticker symbol. For example, saving a chart of GM will cause GM1.PIC, GM2.PIC, GM3.PIC and GM4.PIC to be saved to the SET directory. Due to the naming convention, only one copy of a GM file may exist at a time. If auto chart print is selected, any such files will be displayed on the screen and "dumped" to the printer. I highly recommend answering "Y" to the question of whether or not to delete them after printing. EGA screens contain quite a bit of information. When saved onto a hard drive, that information occupies almost 100K bytes. Main Chart Menu: ---------------- After entering the necessary ticker and date information, hit <F10> to create a chart. The screen will clear and go into Screen Mode 9. (It is at this point that users without EGA graphics will encounter a problem.) The chart for the selected stock will be created in three parts. The top two lines on the screen are menu lines. The third line displays the ticker symbol, chart beginning and ending dates and the High, Low and Closing prices for the entire period. Below this line is a window containing the daily bar chart. A second window at the bottom of the screen contains volume data plotted as a histogram. The menu line contains 10 options. Select any menu item by typing the first letter of the word for that item. The options are as follows: Tech - Hitting <T> will take you to the first technical options menu. From this menu you have access to Simple Moving Averages, Exponential Moving Averages, Displaced Moving Averages, Parabolic Time/Price study, On Balance Volume, Relative Strength, and Momentum calculations. Each of the technical studies is calculated only from the data shown on the chart. Users who register their use of ChartPro or who send for the master version will receive documentation describing the formulas and concepts behind these technical studies. Hit <Esc> to return to main chart menu. Each of the various moving average calculations requires a time period to be entered. Entering, say, "14H" will result in a 14-day moving average calculated from the daily High prices. 14, 14L, 14O, and 14A will do 14-day moving averages based on the Closing, Low, Opening, and Average prices, respectively. Sup/Res - <S> will bring up a support/resistance study loosely based on a chart form introduced by Chart Service Institute in Florida. The chart is constructed to show, in a series of horizontal lines, the levels at which the stock traded in the past. Two forms, Simple and Volume Weighted may be calculated. The simple form determines how often a stock closed in each price interval. (A $1 interval is the default. If you wish to change the interval, simply type a new value before selecting Simple or Volume Weighted). The more frequently it closed in the interval, the longer the horizontal line. This study ignores volume, time, etc., focusing only on the number of closes in the interval. The Volume Weighted form sums the volume for each day the stock closed in the interval. The hypothesis is that popular trading levels (the longer lines) will represent resistance to an upward moving price and support to a declining price. Vol - The results of several of the technical studies are charted in the bottom window. Hit <V> to redraw the volume chart if desired. Op. Int. - This program was designed to chart both stocks and futures. If open interest data exists, it may be charted in the bottom window by hitting <O>. Redraw - Moving averages, Support/Resis. charts, Point and Figure charts and other studies may cover or mess up the original bar chart. Hit <R> to redraw a fresh copy of this chart. (Here is an option not shown on each of the technical studies menus. Hit <Alt><R> to redraw the screen if desired.) Data - Hitting <D> will display a vertical line over the most recent data point. The Date, Open, High, Low, Close, Volume, and Open Interest for the data point will be displayed at the top of the screen. The left and right cursor control keys move the line horizontally across the chart. To jump in larger increments, hold a shift key down while hitting the cursor keys. This function is very handy for tracking down bad data. If the chart scales incorrectly, it will be because there is a wrong number in the data being charted. Locate that bad data with this function and change it with DataPro. Lines - Hitting <L> will bring up a cursor in the middle of the chart. This cursor can be moved with the cursor control keys. When it first comes up, it will move in increments of 9 pixels. To make it move 1 pixel at a time, type a 1 on the top row of the keyboard (not the number pad!) Hitting a 5 will make it jump five pixels at a time, etc. The <+> key will jump the cursor from side to side. Locate the cursor where you wish to begin a line and hit <D>. Move to the end of your desired line and hit <D> again. The line will be drawn between the two points. If you mark each end of the line by hitting <M> (for movable), you can reposition the ending point, hit <M> again and a new line will replace the old line. Hit <R> to reset the beginning point at any time. Hit <C> to change the color that the line will be drawn in. Hitting <Esc> will return you to the main chart menu. After drawing several lines, saving and/or printing, refresh the chart by hitting <R> at the main chart menu. Print - Hitting <P> will bring up another menu. This menu allows you to do a screen dump to the printer, issue a line feed, form feed, reset the printer, or dump the price data to the printer. The printer commands sent are standard Epson commands. Laser printers and non-Epson compatible printers will not function with these commands. NOTE: Drawing the chart on the printer requires two separate programs to loaded before running ChartPro. PC and MS DOS come with a program called GRAPHICS.COM. After running this program, CGA graphics screen dumps, either initiated by hitting <Shift><PrtSc> or by calling interrupt 5, will be sent to the printer. I use another program called EGAEpson.COM which, when loaded along with GRAPHICS.COM, will enable EGA screen dumps. EGAEpson.COM is available free on many different computer bulletin boards. Without a program like EGAEpson.COM, the screen dump will not function. Again, these programs will enable EGA screen dumps to work with Epson Compatibles only. Registered users can write for information for getting this program. The best screen dump utility I have come across to date is called FASTDUMP, by Systems Technology, Inc. This program will work with Epson or IBM compatable dot-matrix printers or Hewlett Packard compatible laser Printers. It will permit you to specify graphics modes and to select one, two or three charts per page. STI has authorized me to distribute this program with my ChartPro Master Version. If you register, you will also receive a copy of FASTDUMP. It is shareware. STI requests that users send $10 to $20 if they like it. Bsave - Printing a full page chart may take a couple minutes on the standard dot matrix printer. Hit <B> to save the chart in binary format on your drive. Then go on to your next chart. Later, select Auto Print Mode from the Go Elsewhere menu and any charts saved on the drive will automatically be dumped to the printer. Each chart will take up a lot of room on your drive, so I recommend selecting the option to delete the files after printing them. <Esc> - Hitting Escape will take you back to the main menu where you can enter a new ticker symbol, etc. ================================================================ DataPro: Data Entry Program --------------------------- Copy the program to the desired subdirectory and run it by typing DATAPRO at the DOS prompt or from the GO Elsewhere menu in ChartPro. It will use the same configuration files that ChartPro created. DataPro: The .PRO File Format ----------------------------- ChartPro is built around a binary file system. Each record in the file contains an integer representing the date, and single precision values for each of the opening, high, low, and closing prices, and the volume and open interest for the given date. In all, each record is 26 bytes long. The earliest date that ChartPro used to address was 1/1/83. It no longer has any practical limitation. DataPro: The Main Menu ---------------------- The first time you run DataPro, you will have to hit <F2> to set the path to the data files. Enter the drive and subdirectory you expect to use to hold the files. If you already did this in ChartPro, the path will be set. DataPro reads the ChartPro configuration files for paths, colors, etc. Again, the .PRO extension is a virtual necessity. At this time there is no reason to change it. DataPro comes up ready to get a ticker symbol for data entry. Type only the ticker symbol, not the .PRO extension. Almost any valid file name can be a ticker symbol. The only special case that DataPro and ChartPro check for is names beginning with "USB" and ending in a number. This naming convention is used to designate data files based on 32's. "USBH0" might be a name one would use for March 1990 Treasury Bond futures. Data for such a contract would be entered in 32's, not decimals. Hence a value of 9617 would represent 96 and 17/32's. 9600 would be 96, even. ChartPro will convert the four-digit numbers to decimal and chart them properly. Sorry bond option traders, 64th's are not supported. After entering the ticker symbol, DataPro will read and display the most recent week's data. The top line of data corresponds to monday. The last day is sunday. If you enter data for saturday, sunday, or a holiday, it will be charted. Nothing is saved on days where the price data is zero. (This means ALL data entries MUST have a some prices!) Move the highlighted bar using your cursor control keys to the point where you want to add data. Type the data. If you do not want to Page-Up or Page-Down through the weeks, hit <F2> to "Jump to New Date". Enter the date you wish to jump to. The week containing that date will be displayed. (The bottom right- hand status box shows the span of dates that may be worked with under the current file mode. You can not jump to a date outside that span.) After entering whatever data you want, hit <Esc>. The data file will be updated and DataPro will let you enter a new ticker symbol. Other available functions include a directory listing of data files found in the path (<F6>) and the ability to delete or kill a file (<F7>). Two other special functions are available. Hitting <F4> will let you adjust data in the file for a stock split. You are prompted for beginning and ending dates and the split ratio. If a split ratio of 2 for 1 is specified, every open, high, low, and close price between the beginning and ending dates (inclusive) will be halved. A split ratio of 1 for 2 for the same time period would reverse the procedure. Again, when the <Esc> key is hit, DataPro saves the data and resets for a new ticker symbol. If you do not want to save the changes you have made, hit <F10>. It will reset, abandoning whatever changes you have made. Hitting <F5> will let you shrink the file. As time goes by and data files grow, they may get to the point where you do not want them to take up so much room. The shrink file function lets you set the earliest date from which to save data. When entering data, be sure to be accurate. Remember the old saying about garbage in/garbage out. It is especially true for charts. In fact, ChartPro will note the high and low prices for the time period it is charting and scale the chart accordingly. If the real range of the stock being charted is, say, $35 to $55, but it finds a garbage entry of $1 then the chart will be scaled from 0 to about $57. The chart would be quite useless! Finally, to terminate DataPro, hit the <Esc> key when prompted for a ticker symbol. One last menu will pop up which will allow you choose between returning to DOS, ChartPro, or DataPro. Data Entry Summary: ------------------- DataPro was designed to make the data entry task relatively easy and painless. Probably the hardest part of charting stocks is maintaining current data files. Data can be found in most of the larger newspapers. For a few stocks, typing this data is not too time consuming. The more items you track, or the more out of date your data is, the more of a burden the typing will be. For serious users, I highly recommend getting access to the Dow Jones News Service. Historic data for most publicly traded stocks is available for a small fee (presently $.44 per minute for non-prime time usage at 1200 baud.) I track about 25 issues and can get two weeks of data for each of them all in under two minutes. Accessing DJNS requires a modem and a communications software package. Modems are now available for under $50. Good shareware communication programs such as ProComm may even be bundled with the modem, or are available on many bulletin boards. I believe the cost of ProComm is $25. I use two programs to access the Dow Jones News Service current and historic quotes and to convert them into Pro file format. One, CMD4DJNS.EXE, creates a command file which, used with Procomm, will request the desired quotes as fast as DJNS can send them. It really minimizes on-line time, saving money. The other program, QUOTREAD.EXE, will convert quotes from DJNS (or even Prodigy) into the Pro format. Both are free with the ChartPro Master version. No support for using Compuserve quotes is provided. When you get your quotes from Compuserve, you are getting Dow Jones News Retrieval Service quotes "second hand". You pay both Dow and Compuserve. If you wish to continue getting quotes, get a subscription to the DJNR service. Your costs will be cut at least in half. A few other data sources are supported for the Master Version. Among them are Prodigy, GEnie, Warner Data Communications, Telechart 2000, DialData, Schwab Equalizer, Videotell, SCTA and FCTA data formats and a few others. Comments and questions about ChartPro and DataPro are welcomed. If you would like to see something added to the program, feel free to make the suggestion. Only registered users should expect answers to questions or comments. I apologize to the rest of you, but there is only so much time available for such things. The author can be reached at the above-listed address, or by leaving a message on Prodigy (CRNC95a) or on Compuserve (71131,3253). The Prodigy number will get you a much faster response. Earlier limited versions had a bulletin board number listed. That board has since gone down and is no longer available. ============================================================================ If you like this program and are interested in other programs by the author, feel free to check out DOCSMASH. It will print four or more pages of ASCII text on each sheet of printer paper. My Brother M1509 will easily print this entire document on three sheets of paper. In fact, most of the third sheet will be blank. (Or, on one sheet if I use double sided printing.) It is available to callers to Orchard Hill BBS (see above listing) or in the IBMHW forum, under printer utilities, on Compuserve.