Our MarketCarpet page lets you see “at-a-glance” what an entire market is doing. Individual stocks are represented as squares that are colored on a green to red spectrum. With the standard color scheme, the green stocks are performing relatively well and the red stocks are performing relatively poorly. In this way, MarketCarpets can show a lot of information in a small area.

A sidebar on the right side of the page displays the best and worst performers from your chosen group and allows you to view the performance of a stock (or sector) on a line chart.

MarketCarpets are great for visually scanning and ranking a large collection of stocks at once, as well as for quickly finding the best and worst performers for a given time period. They are designed to be graphically efficient and are especially useful for sector analysis. Like securities, market sectors also trend; consequently, MarketCarpets are a fantastic tool for identifying the strength of a sector, as analysts can use them to determine the strong securities within the sector.

Check out our MarketCarpets overview video below, or just read on to learn how to get the most out of MarketCarpets.

There are several ways to create a MarketCarpet on StockCharts.com, including:

• Clicking on “Charts & Tools” and then choosing one of the predefined MarketCarpets from the dropdown in the MarketCarpets area of that page.
• Clicking on the “MarketCarpet” link in the “Member Tools” area of Your Dashboard.

Once on the MarketCarpet page, you can select a different predefined MarketCarpet from the dropdown menu below the chart.

To create a custom MarketCarpet with stocks you select, you must first create a ChartList with up to 500 of those selected symbols in it, then view that ChartList in MarketCarpet mode.

There are several important sections of the MarketCarpet page:

1. The MarketCarpet itself
2. The Current Technical Indicator
3. The Color Spectrum
4. The Chart Icons
5. The Selected Symbol's Chart
6. The Top 5/Bottom 5 Lists
7. The Date Slider
8. The Predefined Group Dropdown
9. Additional Resources

The use of each of these sections is described below.

Note: The numbers that appear inside of the carpet's squares (1 thru 5 and -1 thru -5) correspond to the Top 5 and Bottom 5 ranked stocks.

You can move your mouse over the carpet to see information about each one of the squares, including which company they represent, their current data values and more.

Clicking on a square causes that stock's mini-chart to appear in the upper right corner of the page. The buttons above the mini-chart allow you to quickly launch a P&F Chart, PerfChart or SharpChart for the selected stock.

MarketCarpets are often about finding outliers - the bright red and bright green squares. Those stocks are usually listed in the “Top 5/Bottom 5” area. In addition, look for general clusters of greens versus reds. For example, on the S&P 500 Sector Carpet, which sector is the most green? Which is the most red? How does that change as you move the slider?

You can use the slider at the bottom of the chart (#2 in the image above) to change the chart's selected date range. The starting and ending dates you choose are displayed above the chart.

You can use your mouse to adjust the slider in the following ways:

• Left-click on the middle of the slider's thumb and drag it left or right to change both the starting date and ending date. This allows you to “slide” your chart forward and backward through time.
• Left-click on the left edge of the slider's thumb and drag it left or right to change the chart's starting date.
• Left-click on the right edge of the slider's thumb and drag it left or right to change the chart's ending date.
• Right-click on the middle of the slider's thumb to see a menu of common chart durations.

There are several keyboard equivalents that you can also use to adjust the chart's start and end dates:

• Use the left and right arrow keys to move the entire slider's thumb left and/or right.
• Hold down the Shift key and use the left and right arrow keys to change the chart's starting date.
• Hold down the Control key (Cmd on a Mac) and use the left and right arrow keys to change the chart's ending date.

Be aware that you may have to click once on the MarketCarpet before the keyboard controls will work.

By default, MarketCarpets use Price data to color their squares. Using the dropdown box in the upper left corner of the chart, you can choose from many technical indicators, including:

• Price - The percentage change in closing price during the selected date range
• SCTR - The StockCharts Technical Rank rating
• Up Days-Down Days - A general breadth measurement
• RSI - Welles Wilder's popular momentum indicator
• PPO - A percentage version of the popular MACD momentum indicator
• Bollinger Band Width - A measure of volatility
• Bollinger Band Position - A measure of a stock's variation from its mean
• StochRSI - A more sensitive version of the RSI
• Aroon Oscillator - A measure of a stock's trend
• Full Stochastics - Another popular momentum indicator

More information about these indicators can be found in our ChartSchool Indicators area.

For some of the indicators, a Delta button will appear next to the indicator dropdown, allowing you to toggle between Change Mode and Absolute Mode. When the button is white, the indicator data is in Absolute Mode, and the carpet is calculated based on the actual values for the indicator (e.g. the RSI value). When the button is gray, the indicator data is in Change Mode, and the carpet is calculated based on the amount of change in the indicator values over the selected date range (e.g. the change in RSI value over the selected 2-day period).

You can right-click your mouse in the middle of the carpet to bring up a menu of additional options, including:

• Animate - causes the slider's thumb to automatically move forward through time.
• Hide/Fixed/Floating Info Box - enables/disables the information box that appears when you mouse over a stock on the carpet. In Floating mode, the information box appears on the carpet next to your mouse pointer. In Fixed mode, the information box appears in the sidebar on the right. If you select Hide, the information box is not visible at all.
• Show/Hide Ticker Symbol - enables/disables ticker symbol labels inside each box of the carpet.
• Show/Hide Top/Bottom 5 - enables/disables the numbering of the Top 5 and Bottom 5 stocks on the carpet itself.
• Market Cap Mode/Square Mode - switches between squares proportional to a stock's market cap and equally-sized squares.
• Color Schemes - several color combinations to choose from. The default value is “Red, White, Green.”
• Zoom In/Out - used to zoom in on one specific subsection of the carpet (e.g. one sector of the S&P 500 Sector MarketCarpet) or to zoom back out and view the entire carpet.

Members can click the “Permalink” link located below the carpet to get a link to their MarketCarpet that can then be bookmarked and/or used in web links.

Members can also use MarketCarpet charts to view ChartLists. From Your Dashboard, select “MarketCarpet” from the “View As” dropdown next to the ChartList you wish to view. Alternately, you can switch to MarketCarpet format from other ChartList formats, such as Summary, Gallery View or CandleGlance. To do so, select “MarketCarpet” from the “View List As” dropdown.

The MarketCarpet View displays all the charts on your ChartList in MarketCarpet format. Above the chart, you can use the “Select List” dropdown to choose a different ChartList to display.

You can add or edit notes for the entire ChartList by clicking in the ChartList Notes box at the bottom of the screen. Click the “Save” button once you've made your changes. For more editing functionality, use the “Edit List” button at the top of the screen to load the ChartList in Edit View.

The “Delete List” and “New List” buttons can be used to delete the current ChartList and create a new ChartList, respectively.

• MarketCarpets: The Basics
• MarketCarpets: Advanced Techniques

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