Comparison Charts

While it is always important to chart your stocks to see how they are performing, oftentimes the most meaningful information you can gather is determining how well your stocks are performing compared to other stocks and indexes. Yahoo! Finance Charts allow you to perform detailed comparisons using the COMPARE TO features.

COMPARE TO features allow you to compare your stocks to an assortment of predetermined COMPETITORS, INDEXES, RECENT symbols you have viewed and other symbols you have added. For instance, PetroChina Company (PTR) is a competitor of ExxonMobil. And if you are interested in oil stocks, you probably want to see which oil stocks are outperforming other oil stocks. So you decided to create a comparison chart. To plot a comparison chart with a predetermined competitor or index, click on the appropriate button under the COMPETITORS or INDEXES headings—in this case, PETROCHINA (PTR). Once you click on a button, a red light will appear in the right portion of the button indicating that it has been activated. The chart will also change as a second line is plotted across the chart, and the y-axis changes from a price-based format to a percentage-based format. You will also see a second legend button appear in the upper left corner of the chart containing the ticker symbol for the stock or index you are comparing.

Looking at your new comparison chart, you see the blue line represents ExxonMobil and the red line represents PetroChina. You also notice looking at the y-axis on the right side of the chart that PetroChina has gained more than 40 percent during the past year while ExxonMobil has gained only 5 percent. This information is invaluable. You had already determined you were interested in oil stocks, but now you know that PetroChina has been performing much better than ExxonMobil.

The same concept applies if you want to compare the performance of the stock you are analyzing with the performance of a major index, like the S&P 500. To get started, you first need to remove PetroChina from your comparison chart. You do this by placing your cursor over the PTR legend button in the upper left corner and waiting for an exit box, or “X,” to appear. Once it does, click on the “X,” and the information for PetroChina will be removed from the chart. Next, click on the button for the S&P 500 (^GSPC), which is under the INDEXES heading. This will plot the comparison chart for the S&P 500.

Looking at your new comparison chart, you can see that ExxonMobil is keeping pace with the S&P 500.

Finally, you decide you want to see how well ExxonMobil compares to Chevron (CVX). First, you will remove the S&P 500 chart by clicking on the “X” to the right of the ^GSPC legend button. Next, Chevron is not currently listed under the COMPETITORS heading so you will need to manually enter the ticker symbol in the ADD SYMBOL(S) field. Lastly, you can hit ENTER on your keyboard or click the GO button to the right of the ADD SYMBOL(S) field.

If you had previously viewed a chart for CVX, however, that symbol would already be in your RECENT list of viewed symbols. Your Yahoo! Finance Charts conveniently save those symbols you have viewed previously—giving you easy access to them should you ever need to compare their performance to the performance of the symbol you are viewing.

When your new comparison chart appears, you see that although the two lines seem to move in tandem, Chevron has actually done twice as well as ExxonMobil during the past year—gaining more than 10 percent while ExxonMobil has only gained 5 percent.

Now that you're finished reading the text version of this tutorial, watch the video.

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