Japanese Candlestick Chart or Candlestick Chart as they are popularly known are one of the most commonly used stock charts.
According to Wikipedia, a Japanese Candle Stick Chart is,
Candlesticks are usually composed of the body (black or white), an upper and a lower shadow (wick). The wick illustrates the highest and lowest traded prices of a stock during the time interval represented. The body illustrates the opening and closing trades. If the stock closed higher than it opened, the body is white, with the opening price at the bottom of the body and the closing price at the top. If the stock closed lower than it opened, the body is black, with the opening price at the top and the closing price at the bottom. A candlestick need not have either a body or a wick.
Today we will learn how to make a candlestick chart in Microsoft Excel in 4 simple steps. For our purpose, we will plot candlestick chart for Apple stock prices between Jan 26 and May 02.
1. First get the stock price data
You can get stock price details – open, high, low, close prices for the stock chart from anywhere. I have used google finance (here)
The data should be in this format for us to make the chart:
2. Insert stock chart
Select your data and launch insert chart dialog and select “stock chart” as type and “Open High Low Close Chart” as sub-type.
This will insert a chart like the one shown below.
However there is a problem with this chart: excel leaves blanks when stock market is on leave (for eg. weekends) so,
3. We change the axis type from time-scale to category
Right click the chart and select chart options and in the “axes” tab change the category axis type from “automatic” to “category”. This ensures that excel treats dates as categories instead of times and thus removes the blanks.
But when we do this, excel reverse the dates, thus your new chart would read from 02 march to 26 jan instead of the otherway around. To fix this, select the category axis, and check the categories in reverse order and value axis crosses at maximum category options. This sets the date order correctly.
4. We are almost done, now format the chart
Adjust axis scaling options, grid lines etc and you have a Japanese candlestick stock chart ready.
Download the Japanese Candlestick Chart Template
Go ahead and download the Japanese Candlestick Chart Tutorial workbook and use the template to make stock charts.
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14 Responses to “Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability”
I think the virtue of pie charts is precisely that they are difficult to decode. In many contexts, you have to release information but you don't want the relationship between values to jump at your reader. That's when pie charts are most useful.
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Chandoo,
millions of ants cannot be mistaken.....There should be a reason why everybody continues using Pie charts, despite what gurus like you or Jon and others say.
one reason could be because we are just used to, so that's what we need to change, the "comfort zone"...
i absolutely agree, since I've been "converted", I just find out that bar charts are clearer, and nicer to the view...
Regards,
Martin
[...] says we can Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability. Such a pie has too many labels to fit into a tight space, so you need ro move the labels around [...]
Chandoo -
You ask "Can I use an alternative to pie chart?"
I answer in You Say “Pie”, I Say “Bar”.
This visualization was created because it was easy to print before computers. In this day and age, it should not exist.
I think the 100% Bar Chart is just as useless/unreadable as Pies - we should rename them something like Mama's Strudel Charts - how big a slice would you like, Dear?
My money's with Jon on this topic.
The primary function of any pie chart with more than 2 or 3 data points is to obfuscate. But maybe that is the main purpose, as @Jerome suggests...
@Jerome.. Good point. Also sometimes, there is just no relationship at all.
@Martin... Organized religion is finding it tough to get converts even after 2000+ years of struggle. Jon, Stephen, countless others (and me) are a small army, it would take atleast 5000 more years before pie charts vanish... patience and good to have you here 🙂
@Jon .. very well done sir, very well done.
good points every one...
I've got to throw my vote into Jon's camp (which is also Stephen Few's camp) -- bars just tend to work better. One observation about when we say "what people are used to." There are two distinct groups here (depending on the situation, a person can fall in either one): the person who *creates* the chart and the person who *consumes* the chart. Granted, the consumers are "used to" pie charts. But, it's not like a bar chart is something they would struggle to understand or that would require explanation (like sparklines and bullet graphs). Chart consumers are "used to" consuming whatever is put in front of them. Chart creators, on the other hand, may be "used to" creating pie charts, but that isn't an excuse for them to continue to do so -- many people are used to driving without a seatbelt, leaving lights on in their house needlessly, and forwarding not-all-that-funny anecdotes via email. That doesn't mean the practice shouldn't be discouraged!
[...] example that Chandoo used recently is counting uses of words. Clearly, there are other meanings of “bar” (take bar mitzvah or bar none, for [...]
[…] Grouping smaller slices in pie chart […]
Good article. Is it possible to do that with line charts?
Hi,
Is this available in excel 2013?