Show me how to place todays closing price of a stock on a scale of 0 to 100

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 05 Apr 2005 06:52 PDT

borsho-ga,

I'd be glad to help you with this one, if I can, but as the comment
below notes, it would help to have some additional information.

What -- exactly -- are you trying to accomplish?  

Do you simply want to take the closing price of an individual stock
and plot the value on a graph of some sort?

Do you want to build a dataset of values in a spreadsheet, like Excel?

The more you let us know, the better we can assist you.

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by borsho-ga on 05 Apr 2005 08:38 PDT

I'm not trying to compare prices of different stocks. I'm not trying
to calculate Relative Strength.
I would like to scale 0-100 the closing price of a stock on a graph.
Let's assume I can determine the high and low closes over a specific time
frame...say 100 days....would that help? I think it would have to be calculated
like RSI? 
Does this help? Sorry!

The method you will use is analogous to the formula for converting
Fahrenheit temperatures to Celsius temperatures.  "Fahrenheit and
Celsius Temperature Scales" by Kathee Terry, Athena Curriculum Weather
(November 1, 1996) http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/weather/fahrcels.html

In general terms, the formula is (P - L) [100/(H - L)] = The Scaled
Price where P is the closing price, H is the high close over the time
period under consideration, and L is the low close over the time
period under consideration.

For example, if the stock closes at 25 and has a high of 70 and a low
of 20, the formula is (25-20) [100/(70-20)] = 10.  If the stock closes
at 70, the formula is (70-20) [100/(70-20)] = 100.  If the stock
closes at 20, the formula is (20 -20) [100/(70-20)] = 0.  If the stock
closed at 45, the formula is (45 -20) [100/(70-20)] = 50.

Sincerely,

Wonko

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Request for Answer Clarification by borsho-ga on 05 Apr 2005 15:33 PDT

Thanks Wonko.

Interesting observation Myoarin...95% of the "chartists" who have been
working for decades are wrong...so how can their "systems" cause the
stock market to move in the desired direction? Thanks for your interest!

Borsho

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Clarification of Answer by wonko-ga on 05 Apr 2005 17:11 PDT

I am glad you liked my answer.  Thank you for the five-star rating.

Sincerely,

Wonko

I think Wonko's answer provided me with what I wanted to know.

With respect, what you seem to be asking makes no real sense.
In essence, you are asking for an index for a single stock, with the
guarantee that the index value will never rise above 100.  Without
knowing what the maximum future price for the stock will be, which of
course, we cannot, the only way to achieve this is to set the scale
arbitrarily high.  Say the stock is currently trading at $10.  Divide
the closing price by 10,000, and you'll have an index that probably
won't reach 100 any time soon.  Another possible way is to set the
scale a lot lower, and nearer a realistic likely maximum price, in
this case, perhaps by dividing by 0.3.  If the stock price does reach
$30, and the index therefore reach 100, you will have to reset the
basis for the index.  If you take that to its extreme, you reset the
index every day, and every day, the index is 100.

What exactly are you trying to track?
Are you trying to compare prices of different stocks?
Have you considered using the stock closing price as a fraction of an
appropriate existing stock index?  That should allow you to see which
stocks are outperforming the market average, and how they fare against
each other in that regard.

Wonko-ga has an interesting answer, but I  - like Pafalafa-ga and
Xarqi-ga -  don't know what it will you tell you.  The "chartists"
have been working for decades to develop ways to anticipate how stocks
will move, based on past movements.  If they work IMHO it is because
they are all following the same system and buy or sell with the
indicators that they all follow suggest that they should buy or sell,
respectively, and that can indeed cause the price of the stock to move
in the expected direction.

Xarqi's problem can be overcome by using a logrithmic scale, but I
don't think that will be much help.