Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

New Visitor Questions

How can StockCharts.com help me?

StockCharts.com provides online investors with high-quality technical charts for stocks, funds, and indexes from the US, Canada, UK, and India. Our website has been awarded the prestigious “Readers Choice Award for Best Technical Website” from the readers of Stocks & Commodities magazine every year since 2002.

Our SharpCharts charting tool allows anyone to quickly create high-quality bar and candlestick charts using any web browser without the need for any plug-ins. Users can then add technical indicators and line studies to analyze stocks and determine advantageous buy and sell levels. Many other kinds of technical charting tools are also available on the website.

Our full-screen, interactive Advanced Charting Platform (StockChartsACP) features a rich technical analysis experience with real-time streaming data, several indicators and overlays, flexible multi-chart layouts, exclusive plug-ins, equities trading through Tradier, and much more.

StockCharts also provides expert commentary from industry legends Larry Williams and Martin Pring, along with technically focused articles from other technical analysis experts.

Finally, StockCharts.com is the home of ChartSchool, the biggest online collection of technical analysis articles available anywhere.

I'm new to StockCharts.com. Where should I start?

As a starting point, we recommend checking out our Getting Started with StockCharts series, which will introduce you to the main features available on our site.

If you want to dive right in, here are a few other recommendations for learning about what StockCharts.com offers.

Click on Charts & Tools at the top of any page to try out all our charting tools.
Click on Articles at the top of any page to see our recent market commentary articles.
Click on Help in the upper right corner of any page to learn more about the features of our website.
You could also click on Instructional Videos on the right side of the Charts & Tools page to watch videos that explain how to use our tools.

Do you provide phone support?

We are not able to provide phone support at this time. Instead, we support our customers via our web-based documentation, our blogs and support articles, and our email-based support system.

Unfortunately, adding phone support to our site would significantly increase the cost of our service, so we don't expect to add that capability any time soon.

Our support team works very hard to provide users with help via email. If you have watched the “Getting Started with StockCharts" video and still have questions, please Contact Our Support Team so that we can help answer your questions.

Questions about Subscribing

What additional benefits do paying subscribers receive?

All StockCharts.com subscribers have access to the following benefits:

The ability to create charts with Intraday data periods (1-minute, 5-minute, etc.).
The ability to create larger charts with many more technical indicators and datasets.
The ability to create charts that go back to 1990 or earlier.
The ability to save charts to their account.
The ability to save annotated charts.
The ability to try out our custom scanning functionality on a limited scale.
Access to premium market commentary (Martin Pring's Market Roundup, archives of John Murphy's Market Message).
The ability to create custom RRG charts.
The ability to see historical data in table format.

Extra and Pro members also have these additional benefits:

The ability to create and run custom technical scans.
The ability to group and organize saved charts.
The ability to install pre-created collections of charts (ChartPacks).

Pro members also have these additional benefits:

The ability to create even larger, more complex charts.
The ability to save more charts into more ChartLists.
The ability to create charts based on data before 1980.

For more information about our different subscription services, please click here.

Do you offer a free trial?

Yes, we offer new members a one-month free trial for any of our paid subscription plans. During the trial period, you can freely change your service levels and experiment with our features. A great place to start is our “Welcome” page, where you can walk through our main features step-by-step. We will also send you helpful emails explaining all of our member-only features.

When your trial period ends, assuming you have not canceled your account, we will charge your credit card for the next month of service based on the service level you selected by the end of the free trial. We will continue to charge your card at the start of each month until you cancel your membership.

Click here to sign up for your FREE StockCharts trial!

How much does your service cost?

StockCharts offers three different Service Levels. They are Basic, Extra, and Pro. Click here to see the pricing for each service level and the features they include.

In addition to the service level, you can add one or more of our real-time data plans to whichever service level you select. StockCharts offers real-time data for the US, Canada, and UK markets.

For more information (and a helpful video) about our service levels and data plans, please see our Subscribing to StockCharts article in the Support Center.

Do you offer a referral program?

We do! If your friend entered your email address in the appropriate field the first time they signed in (and your account was active at the time), you should get one additional month of service added to your account during the first week of their second month, provided that they don't cancel. If this doesn't happen, please let us know so we can resolve the issue.

Thanks for recommending us to someone else! We love hearing that people like our service enough to recommend it to others.

Questions about My Account

How do I change my password?

To change your account password, please use the following steps:

Log in to your account using your current email address and password.
Click on your name or the person icon in the upper right corner of any page, then choose “Your Account.”
Click on the “Edit” link next to your password on the right side of the page.
Enter your new password into the “New Password” box, then re-enter it in the “Confirm Password” box.
Press the “Save and Update” button to complete the password change.

Note: Passwords must be between 7 and 20 characters long. They can only contain letters, numbers, and hyphens.

For more information about account passwords, please see our ChartSchool article on Using Your StockCharts Account.

How do I update my credit card number or expiration date?

If you wish to update your credit card information, please follow these steps:

Log in to your account. Click on your name or the person icon in the upper right corner of the page, then choose “Your Account”.
Click on the “Update” link next to your credit card info in the “Account Details” section.
Enter your credit card and location information.
Press the “Submit” button to complete the process.

For more information about updating this and other account settings, please see our Support Center article on managing your account settings.

What is the CVV code?

If you are using a credit card from Visa, MasterCard or Discover, the CVV code is the three-digit number on the back of your card. If you are using an American Express card, the CVV code is the four-digit number on the front of your card.

How do I view an invoice?

To view an invoice for your StockCharts account, you will first need to log in to your account. Next, click on your name or the person icon in the upper right corner of the page, then choose “Your Account”. Then, click on “See Transaction History” on the right side of the page to show a list of your previous transactions.

Next, click the “Get Invoice” button to view the invoice for a particular order. To generate a combined invoice for multiple transactions, select a start and end date range below the list of transactions and click the “Generate Invoice” button.

If you would like to print the invoice after it has been created, click the “Print Invoice” button on the invoice page.

Why would I want to pay for a real-time data plan when you offer free real-time charts?

While our free BATS real-time charts can be quite useful for newcomers or casual chart watchers, they have several important restrictions that might make our real-time data plans more suited for your needs:

Most US stock orders are executed on the NYSE or Nasdaq exchanges. Only our real-time data plan shows the “official” data for those exchanges.
There is no reliable volume information associated with our free US real-time data bars.
Free real-time charts are only available for popular US stocks. We do not have free real-time data for thinly-traded US stocks or for non-US markets.

If these limitations prevent you from getting what you need out of BATS real-time charting, we highly recommend considering a subscription to at least one of our official real-time data plans.

Learn More: Adding Data Plans to your service

Do you have a mobile app?

Yes, we do have a mobile app for iOS devices.

Want to access your StockCharts account, see how the market is doing, or keep an eye on your ChartLists while you're on the go? The StockCharts mobile app for iPhones and iPads is a great companion.

If you're a StockCharts member, download the StockCharts app from the Apple App Store. Enter your login credentials and view market summaries, your ChartLists, or a chart of any ticker symbol you choose. So, after you download the app, fire up your StockCharts mobile app and get access to its features.

For more information on using the mobile app, see our Support Center article on the StockCharts Mobile App.

Questions about the Data behind our Charts

How do your BATS real-time charts work?

Our BATS real-time charts are generated using data provided by the BATS exchange. This data is a free alternative to “official” real-time data provided by stock exchanges. While BATS data closely approximates their official counterparts, there are a few key differences that users should be aware of:

BATS data is only available for US stocks, though it does not include some thinly traded stocks.
Volume data from the BATS exchange is significantly lower than the volume data from the NYSE/Nasdaq.
Price data can be different than the price data from the NYSE/Nasdaq, especially for thinly traded stocks.

Because of these limitations, we display this BATS data differently on our charts:

BATS data bars are highlighted yellow to distinguish them from the final, official data on the chart.
We only display BATS data for the most recent 15 minutes on our charts. After that, we replace the BATS bar(s) with delayed “official” bars from the major exchanges.
For intraday charts, we place a vertical, dashed yellow line on the chart in order to show where the free real-time bars end and the official bars begin.
Because the volume data from the BATS exchange is so much smaller than the official volume data, we do not display volume or volume-based indicators for the BATS section of the chart.

Click here for a full explanation of BATS real-time data, including example charts comparing a BATS-based chart with an official real-time chart.

Why is the data on your site different from the data on some other website?

There are several reasons why data on our site may differ from data from other sources. Here are some of the most common reasons:

Adjusted vs. Unadjusted Data

We adjust our historical price data to remove the effects of fund distributions, dividends, and stock splits from our charts. If you notice multiple data differences in a stock's historical data, this is most likely the reason.

Splits, distributions, and dividends are “artificial” changes in price and can create gaps in technical charts. These price gaps could potentially result in misleading signals from technical indicators. To eliminate those gaps, we decrease our historical prices (and increase our historical volume data) in a way that removes these misleading signals.

Learn More: Price Data Adjustments

Additionally, we offer special unadjusted ticker symbols for most stocks and ETFs. Charts of these unadjusted symbols use price data that has not been adjusted for splits or dividends (although all our charts, even those configured to use unadjusted data, are still adjusted for splits). To see a chart with unadjusted data, add an underscore character to the front of the symbol (e.g. "_MSFT").

BATS vs. Official Real-Time Data

When the markets are open, users who don't have an “official” real-time data plan for the US will see real-time data from the BATS exchange. BATS data is similar, but not identical, to data from the NYSE and Nasdaq exchanges. Notably, the volume data for BATS quotes is always much lower.

Learn More: BATS Real-Time Data

Intraday Data Time Delays

We provide real-time data on our charts as quickly as we receive it from our data feed. That said, it is still possible that someone with a professional data feed may see real-time data on those feeds sooner than it appears on our charts. However, that delay should only be a couple of seconds at most.

International Data is Updated Once a Day

Our International Indexes are only updated once per day, typically around the end of the US trading day, which may be several hours after the exchange in question has closed for the day. We provide International Indexes to help our users gain a long-term understanding of the direction of their associated markets; the indexes are not recommended for active traders in those markets.

Additionally, we recommend that people use the extensive collection of International ETFs now available as real-time proxies for tracking international markets.

Do you provide charts of commodities or futures contracts?

At this time, we only track individual futures contracts for e-mini futures. Our e-mini futures contracts all start with the “^” character. For a complete list of the contracts we are currently tracking, please click on this link.

However, we provide spot price data for a variety of commodities and futures traded on the CME and ICE exchanges. These include $GOLD, $SILVER, and $WTIC, among others. For a complete list of those spot price symbols, please click on this link.

Note that both individual contract and spot price data is end-of-day only. While we do not have intraday futures data at this time, you can track many commodities intraday using ETFs. For example, use the "GLD" ETF instead of $GOLD.

Do you provide charts of currency pairs?

Yes, we provide real-time charts for currency pairs. You can find a list of all the currency pairs we track by clicking on this link.

The data starts Monday at 00:00 UTC or Sunday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST.

Can I export your data to another program like Excel?

In general, we do not allow users to export our data. However, members of our Pro service can download daily, weekly, or monthly data in CSV format. For detailed instructions on downloading data, please see our Support Center article "How Do I Download Data to Excel?"

How far back does your stock data go?

Daily/Weekly/Monthly Data

For most stocks and mutual funds, Basic and Extra members can create charts using daily price data that go back all the way to 1990. For major indexes, they can create charts going back to 1980. Pro members, meanwhile, can create charts using daily price data that go back to 1970 and earlier.

Members can also examine daily data in table form. Basic and Extra members can examine this data going back to 1990; Pro members can go back all the way to 1970.

Intraday Data

Members can create 1-, 2-, 3-, 5- or 15-minute charts going back 20 days, 10- or 30-minute charts going back 40 days and 60- or 120-minute charts going back to mid-2001.

Do you provide real-time charts for US and Canadian stocks?

Yes. Optional real-time data plans provide “official” real-time data from the exchanges for the US, Canada, and the UK.

In addition, our BATS Real-Time data plan provides free real-time data for most US symbols using data from the BATS exchange. Our Free users can see daily and weekly charts based on that same BATS Real-Time data.

Learn More: BATS Real-Time Data

Do you provide Options information?

Yes, options data is available on our Options Summary page for US stocks, ETFs, and indexes.

To learn more about getting the most out of this tool, see our Support Summary article on the Options Summary.

How do I learn about a specific index or market indicator?

StockCharts.com offers access to many indexes and market indicators. Knowing what each index or market indicator shows can be daunting. You can use our index catalog to search for a specific index or market indicator and learn more details.

You can also regularly visit our expert market commentary, ChartSchool, or StockCharts TV, where you can find more information about specific index or market indicators and learn unique ways to apply them.

I see a chart with a bad data point. What do I do?

StockCharts goes to great lengths to make sure the data is accurate. Once the stock market closes, the daily quote (open, high, low, close, and volume) for each stock is audited by the exchanges. That means the people at the exchanges review all the trades for each stock, toss out any incorrect numbers, and then reissue the “official” values for open, high, low, close, and volume for that stock. To ensure we have the “official” numbers, we recollect the daily data from our data vendors several times each day after the market closes. We aim to have “official” numbers in our database for every stock's daily values.

Intraday data, however, is a different story. Exchanges do not audit intraday data values or issue corrections, nor are there any other public sources where intraday data can be cross-checked; the data simply is what it is. Intraday data is a running record of what our data feed told us the stock was trading during each minute of the trading day. That said, we still work hard to fix intraday data once it gets off the data feed and into our databases (after the markets close each day). Once the data is “ours,” we can fix any blatantly obvious problems, such as spikes and dropouts.

If you encounter a bad data point on an intraday or daily chart, we ask that you wait until the audit is complete, typically by 6:00 PM Eastern Time, before reporting the data error. This is because we cannot correct bad data while the market is open and must wait for the audit process to be completed.

Do you adjust your price data for stock splits, dividends, or distributions?

We do adjust our historical data to remove the “artificial” effects of splits, dividends, and distributions from our charts. If we didn’t do that, you would see big vertical gaps in a chart. These gaps would cause misleading technical signals to appear on your charts.

Here’s an example. Say a stock had a 2-for-1 split, and the price suddenly drops 50% on the chart. This would wreak havoc on an indicator such as the MACD, which would turn bearish because “momentum” suddenly dropped. But traders aren’t bearish on the stock because of a split. If anything, traders might be more bullish. To eliminate the big downward price gap, we divide all the price data from before the split by two and multiply all the corresponding volume data by two. This eliminates the gap and gives a true picture of people’s opinions of the stock.

It’s similar for non-market-related adjustments, including dividends and distributions. While not usually as flashy as splits, dividend and distribution adjustments could cause misleading signals if their effects aren’t factored out.

Learn More: Price Data Adjustments

If you want to see the unadjusted data for a stock, add an underscore to the front of the ticker symbol, e.g., “_TSLA”. The resulting chart will use price data that has not been adjusted for dividends or distributions (although all our charts, even those configured to use unadjusted data, are still adjusted for splits).

Important Note: Unadjusted data is only available for daily and longer-period charts. Our intraday charts always use adjusted data, regardless of whether the chart is configured for unadjusted data.

Want to see when splits or dividends occurred? If using SharpCharts, do the following:

Enter a symbol in the “Create a Chart” box.
From the Overlays dropdown menu, select “Events.”
Click “Update.”

Below is an example.

The small boxes at the bottom of the price area that corresponds with the vertical lines are the event markers. They identify when splits/dividends/distributions happened and the type of split and dividend or distribution values. In July 2021, NVDA had a 4:1 stock split. The rest of the event markers display the dividends or distributions in dollars.

How is Percent Change Calculated?

On the StockCharts site, the Chg value shown at the top of the chart displays the difference between the latest price on the chart and the previous period's closing price. The one exception to this is for intraday charts, where the Chg is the difference between the latest price and the previous day's close.

Percent Change, meanwhile, is calculated by dividing the Chg value by the previous period's close and multiplying the result by 100.

Percent Change Calculation:

Intraday/Daily Chg = (Price - Prev Day's Close) / Prev Day's Close * 100
Weekly Chg = (Price - Prev Week's Close) / Prev Week's Close * 100
Monthly Chg = (Price - Prev Month's Close) / Prev Month's Close * 100

Keep in mind that other websites could use a different calculation, so our percent change value might not match those sources. We recommend checking with the sources you use to learn what calculation they use for percent change.

If you are using BATS real-time data for your charts, the percent change value is delayed by 15 minutes.

Troubleshooting Common Technical Issues

I'm having trouble using your site. What should I do?

If you're experiencing technical difficulties while using StockCharts.com, try out some of the options below. These are generally pretty effective at fixing user issues on our website.

Make sure that you have enabled support for cookies from our site.
If you have any Internet or Privacy Filters installed, make sure that you have added “stockcharts.com” to the “Allowed Sites” lists for those programs.
Make sure that you have disabled any pop-up ad-blocking software for “stockcharts.com”.
Clear your browser's temporary file cache completely. Directions for your browser can be found at: https://www.refreshyourcache.com/
Restart your computer.

These options will allow you to solve a whole host of problems. If these do not fix your problem, then check out the Troubleshooting area of our Support Center for more suggestions.

Why am I seeing ads on StockCharts?

If you are seeing advertisements while using StockCharts, it means you are currently using a free (non-subscribed) version of our site. To support the availability of our free charting tools and services, we display ads to non-paying users.

All paid members enjoy an ad-free charting experience.

If you’re a subscriber and still see ads, here are a few things to check:

Make sure you're logged in:
Ads may appear if you’re not properly signed in. Visit https://stockcharts.com/login/ and ensure you're logged in with the account linked to your subscription.
Still seeing ads while logged in?
If you're sure you're logged in and ads are still appearing, our team is here to help. Please contact our Support Team directly via our Support Form so we can help resolve the issue quickly.

Want an ad-free experience?

If you're currently using the free version, you can remove ads and unlock premium features by signing up for our 1-month free trial.

How do I hide the notification banner that appears above the chart?

Occasionally, you may see a notification banner at the top of your screen. These banners may be displayed to notify you of upcoming StockCharts events or sales; alternatively, they may be notifications for technical alerts you have created.

To hide any notification banner above a chart, click the “X” icon on its right side.

If you want to see notification messages that you have hidden in the past, click on your name or the person icon at the top of the screen and choose “Notifications.”

Looking for FAQs about working with SharpCharts? See our SharpCharts FAQ for answers!

Need quick help with scans or alerts? Check out our Scanning & Alerts FAQ!

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