Funds Pages: Support and Documentation

The New Highs/Lows pages lists Funds that are at a new 52-week high or low price (as of the close). It does not list Funds who've matched their prior high or low. FlipCharts are available, and My Barchart subscribers have access to historical data and can export this information into Excel.

The list of funds to display on these pages is updated once a day. During the trading day, you will see new price data appear on these pages, as indicated by a yellow "flash". However, the list of funds that appear on the New Highs/Lows pages will not change until approx. 8pm EST.

For a mutual fund to be considered for the New Highs or New Lows pages it must have traded for at least 52 weeks, and it must have changed price within the past trading session.

The pages are initially sorted by Symbol. You can re-sort the page by clicking on any of the column headings:

The page contains three standard views, and FlipCharts are available for the symbols listed on the page. My Barchart members also have the option to display the data using any Custom View you've created, and the data can be downloaded to Excel.

• Main View: Symbol, Name, Standard Deviation, Last Price, Change, Percent Change, and Date of last trade (Fund prices are updated only once per day at 8pm EST).
  
  
• Technical View: Symbol, Name, Last Price, Previous (yesterday's) Opinion, 20-Day Relative Strength, 20-Day Historic Volatility, 20-Day Average Volume, 52-Week High and 52-Week Low.
  
  
• Performance View: Symbol, Name, Last Price, Weighted Alpha, YTD Moving Average, YTD Percent Change, 1-Month, 3-Month and 1-Year Percent Change.
  

The "Hot Mutual Funds' pages highlight the top mutual funds that have unusually large price movement relative to their usual pattern, meaning funds that are seeing breakouts or abnormally large bull or bear moves.  There may be trading opportunities in these large-movement funds.

Standard Deviation
Price movement on the "What's Hot" page is defined in terms of the number standard deviations the fund has moved in the latest trading session.  Defining price movement in terms of standard deviations is preferable to using percentage change because using standard deviations puts all the funds on a level playing field. There are categories of funds that are typically more volatile and have larger percentage price changes than other funds.  For example, low-priced funds are typically much more volatile than other funds. If we used percentage change to define price movement, then high-volatility funds would always dominate the "What’s Hot" list and we would miss lower-volatility funds that might have an unusually large movement on a particular day.

In order to calculate the number of standard deviations that a fund moves in the latest session, we use the following formula:

Today's price movement in terms of number of 20-day standard deviations = ln (latest close/previous close) / ((20-day historical volatility/100)/square root of 252))

In this formula we are simply comparing the latest price change to the standard deviation of the price returns over the last 20 sessions.  We are using the "price return" for the daily change because this is how historical volatility is calculated.  A "price return" is simply the natural log of the latest close divided by the previous close.  Historical volatility is the measure that we use for the comparison in the denominator of our equation because historical volatility is simply defined as the standard deviation of the price returns, factored up to an annualized number.  Since historical volatility is typically expressed as an annualized number, we need to reduce it to a daily figure for our daily "What’s Hot" calculation by dividing it by the square root of 252 (i.e., the approximate number of trading days in a year).

Let's look at an example.  A123 Systems (ticker: AONE) on the close of Friday, May 14, 2010 had the following input figures:  5/10/2010 close was $11.46, 5/09/2010 close was $10.33, and the 20-day historical volatility on 5/10/2010 was 66.69%.  Let calculate how many standard deviations A123 Systems moved on 5/10/2010:

Ln (11.46/10.33) / ((66.69/100)/square root of 252) = 2.47

This indicates that A123 Systems on May 14, 2010 moved by 2.47 standard deviations, which is an unusually large move.  According to the normal distribution curve, we would expect a move of more than two standard deviations less than 5% of the time, indicating how unusually large A123 Systems’s price change was on May 14.

The "What’s Hot" report is also available for weekly and monthly price changes, in which case the price change over the past week or month is divided by the 20-week or 20-month standard deviation, respectively.

Interpretation
The movement of a fund in terms of its standard deviation is also useful to traders because it can be translated into probability terms.  According to the normal distribution bell curve, a fund will show a move of less than one standard deviation (plus or minus) about two-thirds of the time, a move of less than two standard deviations 95% of the time, and a move of less than three standard deviations 99% of the time.  Thus, if a trader sees a fund that has moved 3 standard deviations, the odds of that event are only 1% (or 1 in 100), meaning that fund is showing a major move from a statistical standpoint that is outside the realm of normal statistical expectations.

Funds are ranked by Standard Deviation. You can re-sort the page by clicking on any of the column headings:

The page contains three standard views, and FlipCharts are available for the symbols listed on the page. My Barchart members also have the option to display the data using any Custom View you've created, and the data can be downloaded to Excel.

• Main View: Symbol, Name, Standard Deviation, Last Price, Change, Percent Change, and Time of last trade (E.S.T.).
  
  
• Technical View: Symbol, Name, Last Price, Today's Opinion, 20-Day Relative Strength, 20-Day Historic Volatility, 20-Day Average Volume, 52-Week High and 52-Week Low.
  
  
• Performance View: Symbol, Name, Last Price, Weighted Alpha, YTD Moving Average, YTD Percent Change, 1-Month, 3-Month and 1-Year Percent Change.
  

Daily  |  Weekly  |  Monthly

In addition, there are three time-frames to choose from:

• Daily / Weekly / Monthly - The list of funds to display on these pages is updated once a day at approx. 8pm E.S.T. for the Daily page and approx. 9pm E.S.T. for the Weekly and Monthly pages. Weekly What's Hot/Not is calculated using weekly prices and Monthly What's Hot/Not is calculated using monthly prices.

In order to be considered for inclusion in the "What’s Hot/Not" list, a fund must have a price between $2 and $1000, and an 20-Day Average Daily Volume of at least 10,000 shares.

The Advanced Funds Screener allows you to search for Mutual or Money Market Funds based on unlimited filters that you apply. When you first load the page, BOTH Mutual and Money Market Funds are displayed. (You may search for one or the other by unchecking the appropriate checkbox in the upper right corner of the screener). Other screener options include:

• Screen a Portfolio: The screener allows you to pull in the Funds symbols you've saved in a portfolio, then apply additional filters to those symbols. (Note: if your portfolio contains a mixture of stocks, futures, forex, funds, or ETFs, the screener will import only the Funds symbols.)
  
  
• Save Results in a new Portfolio: After applying filters, you can save the results to a new portfolio, if desired.
  
  
• FlipCharts: Use the FlipCharts link at the top right of the page to display charts of the symbols found by the screener.
  
  
• Excel: Use the Excel Download link to save a .csv file of the data shown on the screener results page.

As you select a filter to apply to the list, the number of funds that match your criteria are displayed on the screen. You can continue to apply as many filters as necessary until you achieve the desired results.

Available filters include:

• Quote (Last, Change, Percent Change, 1-Month Highs/Lows, 3-Month Highs/Lows, 6-Month Highs/Lows, 12-Month Highs/Lows, YTD Highs/Lows)
• Profile (Name)
• Technicals (Moving Average, Percent Change, Raw Stochastic, True Range, Relative Strength, Percent R, Historic Volatility, MACD Oscillator, Standard Deviation)
• Opinion (Overall Averages, Overall Strength, Overall Direction, Indicators)
• Portfolio (select one of your portfolios to import the Funds symbols, then apply any filters you desire)
  

To drill-down in any of the screener programs, you will apply a Filter. Filters may change depending on the Instrument Type of the screener (U.S. Equities, Sectors, ETFs, Forex, etc.).

IMPORTANT! Always click the "Show Results" button to view the symbols found by the screener with the filters you've chosen.

As you add filters to the screener and click the Show Results" button, a list is formed at the bottom of the screen with your results. For most filters, a column will also be added to the list to show the applicable data. You may remove the symbol Name or Last Price by unchecking the boxes at the top of the screener.

To remove a filter from a screener, click the to the left of the screener, or click the "Clear All Filters" link to remove all the filters and start again.

To Save the screener, click the "Save as New" link just above the "Show Results" button. You will be asked to give the screener a name.

Barchart.com provides basic technical analysis on mutual funds.

• YTD Change - listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by year-to-date percent change.
• Price Change - listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by daily change in price.
• Percent Change - listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by daily percent change.
• 5-Day Leaders - listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by 5-day percent change.
• 1-Month Leaders - listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by one-month percent change.
• 3-Month Leaders - listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by three-month percent change.
• 6-Month Leaders - listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by six-month percent change.
• 9-Month Leaders- listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by nine-month percent change.
• 12-Month Leaders - listing of the top 100 mutual funds ranked by twelve-month percent change.

Note: In order for a mutual fund to be included in any of the various lists in the Funds section, it needs to be trading for at least 1 year.

The Funds section is updated once a day at 7 p.m. ET.