Last week, we learned how to visualize Suicides vs. Murders data using Interactive charts in Excel.
William, one of our readers, took this technique and applied it to Stocks. He emailed me because he has some formula issues with the stock data. Once I solved the problem, I asked him, “Can I share this with our readers?” and he is too happy to agree. So here we go.
Interactive Analysis of Stocks using Excel
(Data as of 20SEP2011, 4PM EDT, from Yahoo Finance)
How does this Work?
This workbook is just a clone of Suicides vs. Murders visualization with different data. The only change is that, here we used LARGE and MATCH formulas instead of COUNTIF formula to sort the list.
Learn more about this technique is from KPI Dashboard Sorting article.
Download Stock Performance Analysis Workbook
Click here to download the workbook & play with it. Just change the data & formulas in “Share Data” worksheet to modify this.
Do you Like This?
I really liked how William put this together. It is simple and yet, quite powerful.
What about you? Do you like this technique? Are you planning to use it anywhere? Please share your ideas using comments.
9 Responses to “Show forecast values in a different color with this simple trick [charting]”
While this works in a pinch, it clearly "lightens" the colors of the entire chart. Depending on where you use this, it will be blatantly obvious that you don't know what you are doing and present a poor looking graph.
Why not separate the data into different segments when charting and have as many colors as you have data points? You might have to create a new legend and/or repeat the chart in "invisible ink", but it would be cleaner and more consistent when new or updated data becomes available.
While I think I agree that doing it "properly" via a second series is preferable, I don't necessarily agree that making the entirety of the "future" (data, gridlines, and even the axis) semi-transparent is "poor looking". I think it could be seen as adding more emphasis to the "future-ness" of the forecast data.
In short, it's another tool for the toolbox, even if it's never needed.
Simply and clever 🙂
Quick & effective, cool. thanks.
I always use the dummy series.
Nice little trick, thanks very much!
Two sets of data better. Control is much better.
You can use the same chart next month to see what is actual and what is forecast.
To use this trick, I think grid lines has to be removed, that will make the graphic much more sharp.
to be honest, i dont understand why there is needed to do this way... in this case horizontal lines will be pale as well. then why a just can't change the color of the line partly???
Great tutorial. Thanks for the tutorial!