StockMarket
Before going further we recommend reading and understanding some basic concepts on investing, trading and the stock market:
| Subject | Title |
|---|---|
| Stock Exchanges | Getting to know the Stock Echanges |
| Investing | How to invest in Stocks... |
| Trading | The basics of trading |
| Investing vs Trading | What's the difference |
| Candelstick charts | Definition and Basics Explained |
This package will use ticker symbols to obtain historical price data (explained later). These stock symbols are not static and change every day, every week, new symbols are added to exchanges and some symbols are delisted from exchanges.
This package uses static lists of ticker symbols available on Maple Frog Studio's DATASET github repository. These lists are not live trading quality data, they are maintained on a random basis and must be used solely for learning and practice purposes.
Yahoo finance lists information for many exchanges in the world so some symbols need to be appended with a suffix for the targeted exchange. See the list in this knowledge base hosted on yahoo help, here are a few to give an idea.
| Country | Exchange | Suffix |
|---|---|---|
| USA | Nasdaq (NASDAQ) | No suffix required |
| USA | New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) | No suffix required |
| Canada | Toronto STock Exchange (TSX) | .TO |
| Canada | TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) | .V |
| United Kingdom | London Stock Exchange (LSE) | .L |
| Australia | Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) | .AX |
One important thing to mention, some stock symbols have a period (.) in their ticker string, these must be replaced with an hyphen (-) to be found on Yahoo finance.
Since stock market prices fluctuate all the time during trading hours including pre-market and after-market trading periods prices are presented using the following format :
| Datetime | Open | High | Low | Close | Adj Close | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-03-17 09:30:00 | 184.514999 | 185.399994 | 184.260101 | 185.274994 | 185.274994 | 5374463 |
| 2023-03-17 09:31:00 | 185.285004 | 185.589996 | 184.949997 | 185.324997 | 185.324997 | 655249 |
| 2023-03-17 09:32:00 | 185.289993 | 186.219894 | 185.077103 | 185.119904 | 185.119904 | 847800 |
| 2023-03-17 09:33:00 | 185.095001 | 185.309998 | 184.399994 | 184.860001 | 184.860001 | 628334 |
| 2023-03-17 09:34:00 | 184.854996 | 185.050003 | 183.889999 | 183.970093 | 183.970093 | 677103 |
| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
| 2023-03-17 15:55:00 | 180.000000 | 180.449997 | 180.000000 | 180.250000 | 180.250000 | 669751 |
| 2023-03-17 15:56:00 | 180.250000 | 180.369995 | 179.931000 | 180.035004 | 180.035004 | 440416 |
| 2023-03-17 15:57:00 | 180.039993 | 180.259995 | 179.964996 | 180.059998 | 180.059998 | 412399 |
| 2023-03-17 15:58:00 | 180.059998 | 180.130005 | 179.990005 | 180.000000 | 180.000000 | 433365 |
| 2023-03-17 15:59:00 | 180.000000 | 180.110001 | 179.960007 | 180.110001 | 180.110001 | 1163438 |
This table display prices for every minute of trading using the Tesla (TSLA) ticker symbol. The rest of this article will use day's instead of minutes of data to simplify the discussion.
Price charts display the movement of stock prices. One popular online charting platform is TradingView where the price of Apple's stock should look like the following image.
In the center of the chart candlesticks are used to display price action for every day of trading.
At the bottom an histogram of the volume of buying and selling transactions during the day shows the intensity of trading activity for each day.
On the right is a watchlist of symbols to keep an eye on with more detailed price information underneath.
Other toolbars and configurations are also available to personalise each trader's indivudal preferences. The TradingView Youtube Channel has a long playlist of videos to show how to use this platform.
Candlestick's are a popular way to display a grapĥical representation of the day's (or any timeframe) actions by showing the Open and Close prices and the High and Low prices of the day.
Green Candles represent days when price went up (Open price < Close price). Red Candles represent days when price went down (Open price > Close price). A candlestick chart displays consecutive candles for every day of trading to help see movement of a stock's price and detect trends in price movement movement (peaks and throughs).
|
Candlesticks always have on opening price for the day. Candlesticks always have a closing price for the day. The top wick is the difference between the body and the high. The bottom wick is the difference between the body and the low. |