In this episode of the video series on the various chart types available in XtraCharts, DevExpress' charts product for WinForms and ASP.NET, we look at the stock chart, that most basic of financial charts.
The stock chart is fascinating in that it embodies four values per argument point instead of the usual one. The argument axis is the trading date and the value axis the price of the stock being plotted. The four values are open, close, high, low and the point is represented as a vertical line with tick marks rather than a single dot.
For this demo I copied a month's worth of stock prices for MSFT from Yahoo Finance and inserted them into a new Access database.
[Sidebar note: This video almost didn't get made. I had a plane to catch, Jeff was ready with the camera, we started shooting. I was recording with Camtasia on my little Dell notebook. Half way through, it overheated and ground to a stop. I had to put it in the freezer compartment of the office fridge to cool it off. Minutes ticked by. Finally it was cold enough to do the recording and this is the video that came out of it. One take, no messing. I then popped the notebook back in the freezer so that the rendering would complete without overheating. Needless to say I caught the flight, and I now have a new notebook, one with a better cooling system.]