Security and its Index Question

[cpatte7372]

Hi all,

Since being informed that I broke the record number of posts on this forum I have been holding back the number of threads I post here

Anyway, I really would appreciate any feedback to the following item of interest.

Currently, I have been getting in and out of a security depending on how well its respective industry is performing. For example, I bougt Mattel (MAT) on 11/29/04 because the stock met with my execution strategy and its industry (TOYS) was also appreciating. Since purchasing the stock it has tanked while its industry has been appreciating quite dramatically. Now, Mattel, along with ERTS, have the highest market capitalisation in the industry so one would expect that they would largely determine which way the TOYS sector would move.

So, I was wondering if someone could tell me if its possible to use esignal to compare a security to another security or an index to determine if they generally move in the same direction.

I should mention, that I checked to see if there were any special news events that could have made MAT move so negatively in comparison to its industry, and there were none.

Your opinions and comments are truly appreciated.

Cheers

Carlton

[DuaneG]

Hi Carlton,

Good to hear from you. I think I can help with this one. Yes....it is possible to compare a symbol to another symbol be it stock, index, whatever. It's actually pretty easy to set up. You'll need to start by selecting the base symbol, (i.e.) what you are going to be comparing the other symbols to. In this case, I'll use the airline sector otherwise known as $XAL.

I use the sector as the base symbol and then I added a few specific companies as a comparison. In this case, I used LUV, JBLU, and AMR



From here I need to specify the color and style for the comparison symbols. The line chart format seems to work best. You'll also want to keep track of the color assignment for the comparison symbols. Here's an example.



After all this, here is what we are left with. A comparison of Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, and American Airlines compared against the overall Airlines sector. Hope this gets you started.

[cpatte7372]

Duane,

Thank you very much. That is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

Cheers mate.

Carlton