Thursday, January 27, 2011

Jaanga gDocs: Entire US Stock Market in Single Chart

6,670 Symbols - Every US stock in one chart - Image captured 01-27-2011
Admittedly this chart has too many data points too close together to be of much analytical use, nevertheless this image is remarkable for two reasons.

1. The first element is that any time you load the underlying Google Docs spreadsheet, Google Docs automatically retrieves and updates the data from Nasdaq. Nasdaq publishes data for every stock listed on the NYSE, AMEX and Nasdaq itself. As of today's writing that is 6,670 symbols. The data includes symbol, price, market capitalization, full company name, industry & sector, year of IPO, latest price as well as a link to the Nasdaq web page with latest data. That's over 53,000 fresh data-points that arrive at your desktop within seconds of your asking. And it works every time.

This is an indication of the robustness and efficacy of the Google Docs system. You should also consider that this is occurring within the context of a digital ménage à trois. Your computer links to the Google servers and to the Nasdaq servers simultaneously and displays the combined output on the same web page. I believe this happens without the Nasdaq data passing through the Google servers. In other words this instance of the collection of data is completely private to you and only occurs on your computer. More on these cross-server data collection features in future posts.

2. The second remarkable thing is how effortlessly you spot the outlier (or black swan) in the chart.

If you are familiar with US markets, then you will quickly recognize which company is represented by the large green dot at the top of the screen. Nevertheless you may be surprised as to how much of an outlying outlier this symbols is. There's nobody else anywhere nearby.

If you are not an avid stock ticker reader, then you might like to know the the green dot represents Berkshire Hathaway, the financial conglomerate operated by Warren Buffet et al. As of today's closing the Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares closed at $124,300. The average share in the US trades at between $10 to $20.

 It is the objective of this web site to display such eye-popping results in the twinkle of an eye.

Unfortunately we are not quite there yet. While the spreadsheet and its data (see link at the end) do load fairly quickly, the chart takes a number of minutes load appear and may require that you re-affirm a number of times that you really do wish to keep on waiting.

I am, however, handling three or four thousand symbols updating every minute or so with a fast laptop that has a good amount of memory. So being able to catch an overview of the every symbol traded in the US with just two screen is not shabby at all.

Link: Entire US Market

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