Stockchart: minimalist stock charts

This is the program I wrote for plotting the stock charts on my investment blog. I searched long and hard on Github for an easy to use stock charting program but couldn't find one so I created my own. This one requires just 3 major libraries:

• Numpy
• Pandas
• Opencv

Installation

To get started, just install these libraries via conda:

conda install numpy pandas opencv

or pip:

pip install numpy pandas opencv

Then download and install the package:

git clone https://github.com/xjdeng/stockchart

cd stockchart

pip install -U .

Running

First, download some historical stock prices from Yahoo, like this one. Save it as SPY.csv in your working directory.

Next, run the following:

import stockchart

spy = stockchart.load_yahoo_csv("SPY.csv")

chart = stockchart.defaultChart(spy)

stockchart.show(chart)

(Be sure to hit the space bar when you're done viewing the chart.)

And you'll see something like this:

Parameters

To make the program lean and easy to get started, I didn't include many features, just the bare minimum that I need to manipulate on a regular basis. If you'd like new features, feel free to fork my repository and add the features you'd like.

Main function: defaultChart():

Parameter 1 (required): stock

This parameter contains the stock you want to plot loaded as a Pandas dataframe. You must format the dataframe in the following way:

• Open prices need to be in a column named open or Open
• High prices in a column named high or High
• Low prices in a column named low or Low
• Closing prices in a column named close or Close

Parameter 2 (optional): height

This is the approximate height of the main portion of the chart. The chart will actually be a little higher due to the addition of headers and footers. The default setting is 350 pixels.

Parameter 3 (optional): width

This is the approximate width of the main portion of the chart. The final chart will also be a little wider than this width. The default setting is 600 pixels.

Parameter 4 (optional): upbull

If you set this to 1, the top line and label will be green. If you set this to 0, then it'll be red. If you set this to None (default), it'll be gray

Parameter 5 (optional): downbull

If you set this to 1, the bottom line and label will be green. If you set this to 0, then it'll be red. If you set this to None (default), it'll be gray

Parameter 6 (optional): headtext

This is the text that'll appear at the top of the chart.