Instructions for Creating Stock Charts
1. Open an Excel document. Go to Tools>Options>General tab and on “sheets in new workbook.” Change the number from “3” to the number of stocks you are doing (Fig.1). Close the current workbook and reopen a new one. You should now see a new workbook with the proper amount of sheets for your project. 2. Label Cell A1 as Date, B1 as Price and C1 as Net Change. Double click on the line between the column headers to adjust the cell’s size to fit the text (Fig. 2). You will have to do this again as you enter data into the cells.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
3. Format Column A by clicking on the column header A (Fig. 3). This highlights the entire column. Right click and choose “Format Cells.” Click on the "Numbers” tab and then click on “Date.” On the right side, choose how you want the to display the date. Do the same for Column B and Column C except choose “Currency”. 4. In Column A, type in the first date of the stock price. Grab the lower right corner of cell A1 and drag it downward to add additional dates (Fig. 4). 5. In Column B, type in the closing price for the stock each day.
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
6. In Column C, cell C2, type in the change in price for the first day. In cell C3, type this formula: =SUM(B3-B2), then push the “Enter” key. The difference in price should be recorded in cell C3. The spreadsheet should look like the one in (Fig.5). As previously done in Step 3, grab the lower right corner of cell C3 and drag to the last line of prices in Column B. All of the Net Changes should now be recorded in Column C.
Fig. 5
7. Highlight the area where the data is entered by clicking in Cell A1 and dragging to Cell C11 (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6
8. Select the Chart Wizard from the toolbar (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7
9. The wizard will display a wide range of charts. You must use a line chart. Click on the line chart and a selection of line charts will display. You must use the “line with markers displayed at each data value” (Fig. 8).
Fig. 8
10. Click “next” to go onto Step #2. There are no changes to make on step #2. 11. Click “next” to go onto Step #3. 12. For a nicer looking chart: Fill in the “Chart title”, “X-axis” (Dates) and the “Y-axis” (Price). You can skip this step if you want. Click “finish” (Fig. 9).
Fig. 9
13. Clicking on the finish button should give you a chart that looks like the one below (Fig. 10):
$60.00 $50.00 $40.00 $30.00 $20.00 $10.00 $0.00 1/11/01 1/12/01 1/13/01 1/14/01 1/15/01 1/16/01 1/17/01 1/18/01 1/19/01 -$10.00 1/20/01 Price Net Change
Fig. 10
14. The chart can now be printed or cut and pasted into a MS Word document.