What is a Stock Chart?

Stock charts show real-time and historical market data for publicly traded company stocks. Market data comes in the form of prices, which can be displayed in various ways on stock charts. Traders, investors and others interested in the stock market analyze stock charts to identify possible trends, and attempt to predict where the price will go based on certain external information.

Technical stock chart analysis is performed with the help of various tools, such as drawings and technical indicators. These tools are applied to a stock chart, and sometimes to several charts, to track possible correlations between events. Price data can also be viewed in different formats. Each stock chart can be displayed as either shaded areas, bars, lines or candles. Each stock chart type shows different information, which may be useful for different types of analysis. There are also different timeframes, such one minute, one hour, or one day, which represent the timeframe of market data that is reflected by one bar on the stock chart.

Stock chart trading is then done on the basis of technical analysis, and involves either buying some stock to sell later, or selling some stocks short in order to repurchase them later.

Popular Stock Charts

WebStockCharts.com is a place to view and share popular stock charts. Free and interactive real-time online stock charts make it easy to share your stock chart analysis. Here are some popular instruments that others are looking at:

AAPL Chart	MSFT Chart	GOOG Chart	GE Chart	DELL Chart
JNJ Chart	F Chart	C Chart	BAC Chart	AAV Chart
CSCO Chart	NFLX Chart	HTM Chart	IPAS Chart	MX Chart
STRT Chart	AMZN Chart	BHI Chart	SPY Chart	GLD Chart

Types of Stock Charts

Each stock chart can be viewed as one of the four major chart types – line, candle, area or an Open-High-Low-Close (OHLC) bar. OHLC bars are useful because they show four price points for a particular time frame, which can indicate the amount of volatility throughout the time period, as well as general trend throughout this time. Japanese candlestick is another popular stock chart type, where the closing an opening prices of a bar are joined with a line (called a body) and colored either red or green. This stock chart type is popular because the color coding makes it easy to see if closing price was lower than opening (red) or higher then opening (green). An essential part of proper stock chart analysis begins with choosing a timeframe and a stock chart type that works well for you.