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