Miscellaneous Resources

I thought I'd make a post briefly showing some resources for charting, etc. for those of you who may find it useful.

There are several good free charting programs. Your broker will always have a charting package free of charge, so that is the first place to start if you like the package. However, here a a few that are quite good and are free if you want to explore....

1) FreeStockCharts.com - This is very good because it is free and gives you the ability to save multiple templates and indicators and gives real time data for most everything except cash indexes and TICK data which are delayed. They even have real time currency pair data which is nice. These are made by Worden Bros, which are the makers of the popular Telechart software. I don't like the "look" of this package that much, but the data more than makes up for that.

2) StockCharts.com - This service has great charts, but they are delayed unless you get a paying subscription. There are a lot of indicators available, and the real hit is the ability to create ratio charts, and to chart other data than just price. So you can chart put/call ratios, exchange volume, breadth, etc. and apply indicators to those as well. I really like the look and functionality of StockCharts.com. Also, there is a great deal of explanation of indicators available in the "Chart School" section of the website. John Murphy of technical analysis fame is the headliner/creator here, and the content is good as you would expect.

3) Prophet.net - Prophet charts are my personal favorite in terms of functionality and looks. However, the free Java charts offer limited indicators with no Fibonacci stuff or even text notes. Scottrade and OptionsXpress used to have Prophet charts as their package but now have others that are far inferior from my perspective.


Now the "My Favorite Sites" section of the blog has links to several other things worth exploring. There are candlestick and technical indicator screeners available for free from StockCharts.com. Also Schaeffers Research.com and FinViz.com both have excellent screening capability. Schaeffers is especially useful for screening via their methodology. You can screen for short interest, put/call open interest, analyst buy/sell ratings, technicals, etc.


As far as brokers go, it depends on what you want. But for most small accounts, the less you pay in commissions the better and is the main thing I would look for. I have used Interactive Brokers for several years and their commissions are as low as I know of for retail traders. But they are geared toward professionals and will charge a monthly fee of about $10 I believe if you don't rack up $30 in commissions a month. But $10 is small considering the amount you blow on a couple trades a month at other brokers. Commissions for stocks and options will typically be $1 per buy or sell (per contract for options).


Also for the analytical type, you can download price data from most of the major search engines (Yahoo, Google, etc) and then export it to Excel to then do some of your own analysis. Sites like CBOE.com offer lots of data related to options (put/call ratios, open interest, etc) which you often can download.