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Overlay Financial Data

Short video on how to use hold on command to overlay financial data

Hold on command​

Often analysts want to be able to overlay financial data. This is possible through the introduction of the hold on command.

The hold functionality is available to allow users to overlay multiple datasets onto the same chart axes. This is useful for comparing datasets, or for plotting multiple datasets that share the same x-axis. This guide will walk through the functionalities and the recommended workflow.

Drawing inspiration from MatLab, the hold function is used to toggle the holding state of the current figure. Unlike MatLab, this function needs to be called before calling any function that charts. The hold state can be turned on, from any terminal menu, by running:

hold on

By default, new plots will be placed on a new axis, meaning comparing the magnitude values can be tricky. If you wish to plot subsequent figures on the same axis, you can use the sameaxis argument:

hold on --sameaxis

Once the hold state is turned on, any terminal command with a plot will not be shown until the hold is turned off. To turn off the hold state, and see the combined figure, run:

hold off

An example workflow is as follows. What this will do is plot the CPI and the GDP of the United States on the same axis.

/economy/hold on
gdp -c united_states
cpi -c united_states
hold off

Which outputs:

hold on ex1

To demonstrate, the --sameaxis argument, we can run the previous commands, but starting with hold on --sameaxis. Because GDP is being measured by USD-per-capita (OECD), and CPI is a function of percent, we will only see CPI as a flat line.

hold on ex2

Customizing Charts​

A chart is only as good as its labelling. In the previous example, we can see that the legends reflected the command paths used, but not the arguments. If we added a second country, we would not be able to tell which line is which country. In order to avoid this confusion, when the hold state is on, every function comes with a --legend argument.

Text following the, --legend, argument is passed into the legend when the chart is created. If a command is run without the, --legend, argument, it will default to using the command location. In rare cases, a legend may not appear due to it not being defined in the functions view file. In this case, please raise a GitHub issue so the team can address it.

An additional customization is the chart title. This can be specified by adding the --title argument to the hold off functionality. To exemplify these capabilities, we can plot an income statement item from many companies. We will examine FAANG companies and plot their revenues on the same axis, over the last forty quarters.

/stocks/fa/hold on --sameaxis
income -t AAPL -q -l 40 --plot revenue --legend AAPL Revenue
income -t META -q -l 40 --plot revenue --legend META
income -t AMZN -q -l 40 --plot revenue
income -t GOOG -q -l 40 --plot revenue --legend GOOG
income -t NFLX -q -l 40 --plot revenue --legend netflix
hold off --title FAANG Revenues 10 Year

hold on custom

Example as a Pipeline of Commands​

The following pipeline of commands is the equivalent.

/stocks/fa/hold on --sameaxis/income -t AAPL -q -l 40 --plot revenue --legend AAPL Revenue/income -t META -q -l 40 --plot revenue --legend META/income -t AMZN -q -l 40 --plot revenue/income -t GOOG -q -l 40 --plot revenue --legend GOOG/income -t NFLX -q -l 40 --plot revenue --legend netflix/hold off --title FAANG Revenues 10 Year

Example as a Routine​

Or, a user can create a routine that can be run with the, /exe, command.

    $STOCKS=AAPL,AMZN,MSFT,TSLA,GOOG

    stocks
    fa
    hold on --sameaxis

    foreach $$tick in $STOCKS:
        income -t $$tick -l 40 -q --plot revenue --legend $$tick revenue
    end

    hold off--title FAANG Revenues 10 Year

Known Issues​

Unfortunately, there are some known issues with the hold functionality. These are being worked on, and will be addressed in future releases. The following are known issues:

  • When plotting charts, if the x axes are not the same, there may be an undesired result. For example, if looking at the fixedincome/ycrv function, the x axes is a number in years, so trying to plot a date along x will not work.

  • Candle charts are not supported within the hold state. A work around to plot a close value would be to navigate to qa/pick Close/line, which will plot a line chart.

  • Figures that have subplots on their own are not supported. This functionality is meant to overlay data on the same axes, so if there are multiple subplots, it is not supported. An example would be a function like ta/macd. The TA functions already have a multiple indicator functionality, ta/multi.

  • Running a single plot in the hold state messes with the figure layout and does not give the desired margin.

  • Time series data of varying frequencies may not produce smooth visuals.

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