Here's how I do it now...

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In Reply to: Visually comparable auto-scale mode? posted by Rick Huebner on September 05, 1999 at 12:03:26:

I'm not sure I was clear enough in the first message; here's what I currently do to get the effect I'm talking about.

The goal is to make the percentage scale on the right edge of every chart match up. First, I autoscale all charts. Then I find the lowest percentage shown at the lower right corner of any of the charts in my portfolio, and the highest percentage shown at the upper right corner of any chart. E.G., the worst dip in any chart is to -10%, and the higest spike in any chart is to +350%. Then I manually set the vertical scale for each of my charts so that the min Y-value is -10% of the price at the left edge, and the max Y-value is +350% of the price at the left edge.

Now the right edge of every graph goes from -10 to +350, and the charts show the true performance of each security in visually comparable form. What you see is what you got; twice as high is twice as good. You can compare any kind of chart with the same effect as an Investment Overlay graph, while still keeping the transaction markers, share prices, etc.

Of course, this is pretty inconvenient to do manually, since you have to rescale every graph whenever you change the date range. But it'd be easy to add as an autoscale option, and I think it's important that graphs shown side-by-side should be comparable, not misleadingly similar regardless of performance.

Anyway, thanks again for your work over the years. Your program's still the best; nobody else can seem to get it right.

Replies:

• Re: Here's how I do it now... Mark 09:46:40 9/06/99 (0)