How to View Indicator and Overlay Values for Specific Days
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Members can easily view historical price data for a ticker symbol, but viewing historical values for indicators and overlays is not as simple.
There are two ways to view past data values for an overlay or indicator:
Using the Inspector can be less time-consuming if you need to look up indicator values for multiple days, but the values it provides are only approximate.
For the most accurate and precise historical values, we recommend using the Range setting to create a chart that ends on the date in question, and then viewing the exact value for the indicator/overlay in the chart's legend.
This in-depth tutorial walks you step-by-step through the range settings, as well as how to quickly reconfigure the chart to view values on adjacent days. A bonus tutorial at the end shows you the Inspector method for quickly estimating approximate indicator/overlay values for multiple days.
In this step-by-step tutorial, we'll use the Range settings on a chart to determine the 50-day simple moving average value for MSFT on November 1st, 2024.
The best way to view the exact indicator or overlay value for a date in the past is to use the “Select Start/End” option for the date range, in order to view the chart as it would have looked on 11/01/2024.
Once you've created a chart for MSFT, choose “Select Start/End” from the Range dropdown menu in the Chart Attributes section.
By default, the End Date is set to “(today)”, meaning that the chart will always be updated with today's data. We want to see how the chart looked on November 1st, 2024, so we'll replace the End Date with “2024-11-01”.
Once the chart has been updated, you can see that the date of the chart is 1-Nov-2024, while the chart legends (shown in the green boxes below) now display the price, indicator, and overlay values for that date.
In the above chart, we can see that the 50-day moving average for MSFT was 419.85 on November 1st, 2024.
To quickly change the End Date of the chart in order to view overlay/indicator values for other dates, you can use the arrow keys at either end of the Interactive Date Slider below the Range settings, to move the chart's range forward or backward. Click the left arrow to move the chart's End Date back one trading day; and use the right arrow to move the chart's End Date forward one trading day.
Using the Date Range is very accurate, but can be time-consuming if you want to determine the values for multiple past days. In that situation, you may want to use the Inspector to quickly determine approximate indicator or overlay values for multiple days.
Once you've created a chart for MSFT that includes the past dates in question, click the “Inspect” button above the chart to turn on the Inspector.
With Inspector turned on, you will see grey crosshairs when you mouse over the chart. Move the crosshairs so that the vertical crosshair lines up with the date in question and the horizontal crosshair lines up with the indicator or overlay value for that day (as shown by the green arrows in the example below).
A small information box will pop up near the crosshairs that show the highlighted date, volume and OHLC values. At the bottom of the information box is a “Y” value, which shows the approximate position of the crosshairs on the vertical axis.
When you've positioned the crosshairs over the indicator/overlay on the correct date, this Y value is your approximate indicator/overlay value. You can see that it is not exactly the historical value for the 50-day SMA (419.85), but it is in the ballpark and can be used when an estimate is all that is needed.
