Barchart Opinions show traders what a variety of popular trading systems are suggesting in terms of going long or short the market. The Opinions takes up to 5 years' worth of historical data and runs these prices through thirteen different technical indicators. After each calculation, the program assigns a buy, sell or hold value for each study, depending on where the price lies in reference to the common interpretation of the study. For example, if the price is above the moving average of the security then this is generally considered an upward trend or a buy.
Note: A security needs to have at least 201 active trading days in order to generate an Opinion reading. Opinions are updated every 20 minutes throughout the day, using delayed data from the exchanges.
The Overall Average Signal, Strength and Direction ia shown at the top of the page. This represents the average of the 13 popular indicators detailed in the table below.
The table groups the 13 indicators based on Short, Medium, and Long Term time frames.
- Indicators in the Short Term group generally are used to interpret price movement that happens over the last 20 days.
- Medium Term indicators interpret price movement that happens over the last 50 days.
- Long Term indicators interpret price movement that happens over the last 100-200 days.
- TrendSpotter is in its own group and represents a composite look at price movement.
Note: A security needs to have at least 201 active trading days in order to generate an Opinion reading.
Calculations
The Short, Medium and Long term indicators are grouped together and calculated separately for their groups. The overall indicator is a composite of all 13 studies listed on the page.
- A Buy is assigned 1 point
- A Sell is assigned -1 point
- A Hold is assigned 0 points
The indicator value is determined by adding up the totals for the different groups and dividing this sum by the number of studies in the group. The indicator is expressed in terms of a percentage. If the total is greater than zero, then this is a "Buy". If the total is zero, then this is a "Hold". If the total is less than zero, then this is a "Sell".
To keep the results in a more logical format, we factor the overall opinion by 1.04 to keep the end result in multiples of 8 percentage points, with the exception of a 100% buy or sell. This is why the opinion indicators will be displayed as 8%, 16%, ... 88%, 96% and 100%, for example, rather the exact percentage value.
Support and Resistance
This section shows a snapshot view of the Trader's Cheat Sheet with the Last Price, and four separate pivot points (2 Support Levels, and 2 Resistance Points). The Last Price shown is the last trade price at the time the quote page was displayed, and will not update every 10 seconds (as the Last Price at the top of the Quote page does). The Last Price will update only when the page is refreshed.
Pivot points are used to identify intraday support, resistance and target levels. The pivot point and its support and resistance pairs are defined as follows, where H, L, C are the current day's high, low and close, respectively. Support and Resistance points are based on end-of-day prices and are intended for the current trading session if the market is open, or the next trading session if the market is closed.
- Pivot Point: (P) = (H + L + C) / 3
- First Resistance Level: (R1) = (2 * P) - L
- First Support Level: (S1) = (2 * P) - H
- Second Resistance Level: (R2) = P + (R1 - S1)
- Second Support Level: (S2) = P - (R1 - S1)
