Stock Price Charts

What don't stock price charts have the Y axis start at zero?

Stock charts almost always have their Y axis limited to the range of activity. As an example, check out any stock on Yahoo Finance. If a stock trades between 20 and 25 during a given time period, the chart's Y axis is from 20 to 25, not from 0 to 25. This makes a stock that is very stable, tading between 80 and 81, look just as volitile as a stock trading from 80 to 160 at first glance. If the charts were grounded at zero, you would immediately see that the stable stock was very different than the volitile one.

Public Comments

1. This is because stocks never start from zero. Even at their inception (IPO) they will start at a predetermined price and move from there.
2. The best charts have multiple time compressions. The larger ones ( monthly, weekly ) give a better overview of trends while the smaller ones reflect more current movement.
3. What you need is stock charts plotted by percentage returns (inculding dividends) as you will see at www.fasttrack.net
4. Your observation is correct. However, a chart that only shows the lack of volatility is not very interesting. If you are concerned about "information per square inch" in a chart, you don't want to have to have the y axis start at 0.