Using the Custom Date Sort tool, you can calculate a percent change criteria for a group of symbols for any specific period of time. If you want to see how the Computer Hardware stocks performed during first quarter of 2002 just press the letter C on your keyboard, then click and drag your cursor from the beginning of 2002to the end of March. You can then fine tune the date range to Start Date = 01/02/02and End Date = 03/28/02. Then click OK to build the criteria. TeleChart will then begin to calculate the % change between the dates chosen for all of the stocks in your WatchList. When it is finished calculating, the stocks will be sorted by that % change. This allows you to easily measure the performance of a list of stocks over any time period.
There are three option buttons just below the sliders on the Custom Date Sort dialog that let you choose how the sorts are calculated. This option will always default to % Change.
% Change: Calculates the percentage change in price between the start date and the end date specified.
vs. Industry: Calculates the difference in percent change of price vs. the main industry. If, for example, the stock was up 20% and the industry was up 15%, the resulting value would be 5%.
vs. Sub Industry: Same as "vs. Industry" but uses the performance of the sub-industry instead.
IMPORTANT: Keep in mind that if you are building a Custom Date Sort on a large WatchList it may take a minute or so to calculate.