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Tip of the Day
Custom Profiles - Percent Change
Today's tip will cover the use of a Custom Profile Chart to graphically depict the percent change over different periods of time. This tip will help show the flexibility and power of Custom Profiles. For more information on Custom Profiles, click here. For more information on Custom Indicators, click here.
Let's begin by creating a new Custom Profile. From the Setup Menu, choose "Custom Profile". The Custom Profile Preferences window should appear.
For the QuotePage, you can just select your favorite quotepage or the ".Stocks" quotepage will work fine. For the Period, select "Daily". For the Profile Data Source, let's select "Custom Indicator" and create our own custom indicator by clicking the New button.
Now let's start by using the following syntax for our custom indicator expression…
((CL - CL1) / CL1) * 100
Just copy and paste the above expression into the custom indicator window, and then click "Save". Let's call our indicator "PercentChg". This indicator will just compute the percent change from the close of the previous bar to the current price. (CL1 means closing price one period ago, CL5 means closing price 5 periods ago, etc.) Since we have specified Daily for our custom profile periodicity, this will be the daily percent change from the previous close. Now close the Custom Indicator Window and go back to the Custom Profile Window.
Let's choose to Show… Hi and Lo 10 results ranked Ascending. This will give us the 10 biggest gainers and loser ranked by performance. Let's also choose to recalculate every 1 minute. Also choose some colors you like, and then click the "New Custom Profile" button. You can now close the Custom Profile Preferences window.
As you move your cursor over the bars, you get feedback of the percent change value for that instrument. The profile will automatically recalculate every minute, but can also be recalculated any time by clicking the refresh button in the upper right hand corner. The toolbar can be toggled on and off with the "+" button in the lower right hand corner of the profile.
Double click inside the chart to open the preferences window back up. Now click on the "Edit" button next to the custom indicator to bring up the Custom Indicator window. Let's change the equation slightly to…
((CL - CL10) / CL10) * 100
This will give us a 10 period (in our daily case 10 day, or 2 week) percent change. As soon as the save button is pressed, the custom profile will update to reflect this change. You can continue to change the equation to see the percent change over different periods of time. Just change the 10's in the equation above to the number of days over which you would like your percent change calculated. When you press save, the profile will be updated to reflect this. Now close the Custom Indicator window.
Back in the Custom Profile Preferences window, let's change the Periodicity to "1 Minute" and then click "Apply". Now your profile will be built by calculating the custom indicator on 1 minute data. So if you are using the following expression for you custom indicator…
((CL - CL10) / CL10) * 100
Then the profile will represent the percent change over the past 10 minutes. You may want to make sure all the instruments in the quotepage you are using are marked for intraday data collection, or you can just use the ".Intraday" quotepage to ensure this.
These examples above only scratch the surface of what can be done with custom profiles. It gives you the power to plot almost any data, or combination of data you can imagine, in any timeframe, on any list of instruments and rank and filter them.
The Custom Profile also inherits some of the quotepage functionality. You can right click (cmd-click on Mac) on the ticker symbols to get the same popup menu you get in quotepages. You can also double-click on any ticker symbol to open up a chart on that ticker.
Also See: Custom
Profile Tour
Also See: Custom Indicator Tour