The Broad Market tool calculates many market-wide numbers, such as the number or percent of Advancing Issues, Declining Issues, New Highs, New Lows, stocks above a moving average, etc. SpyGlass uses these values to calculate indicators such as the Advance/Decline Line, Advance/Decline Ratio, Advancing minus Declining Issues, Arms Index (TRIN), Breadth Thrust, Cumulative Volume Index, McClellan Oscillator, McClellan Summation, New Highs minus New Lows Cumulative, New Highs/New Lows Ratio, New Highs minus New Lows, Open-10 TRIN, Overbought/Oversold, Upside/Downside Ratio, and Upside/Downside Volume. For a great description of all of these indicators, see the book Technical Analysis from A to Z.

Some of the values calculated by the Broad Market tool can also be obtained from quote vendors such as Reuters Datalink.

For Broad Market formulas and custom formulas [click here].

Load Information

Last Date - the last date of data to load.

Time Periods - the number of time periods to load. Data will be loaded even if a security doesn't have the specified time periods (e.g., if you specify 500 days, and a security has 400 days, it will still be loaded).

Require Data on Last Date - select this option to force the program to only load securities that have data on the last date specified. This assures that only securities that are trading as of the last date are included, and prevents any "old" securities from being included. Maybe you want those "old" securities, maybe you don't. It's up to you.

Calc Info

The Broad Market tool takes your calculation instructions in straight-forward English. For example, to get the number of advancing issues, you would select "Calculate the number of stocks whose close is greater than their close yesterday".

To create a standard set of calculations, press the Batch button, then press the Defaults button. Press OK to dismiss he Batch dialog, then select the Batch checkbox. Add the folders that represent your universe of securities, then press Calculate and all of your calculations are done at once.

Calculate the - the result can be displayed as a number or a percentage.

of securities whose - the first calculation field can be the close or a moving average.

is - the mathematical relationship can be greater than, equal to, or less than.

their - the second calculation field can be the close, a moving average, the 250-day high, the 250-day low, or the close yesterday.

Batch Calcs - if you'd like to do multiple calculations at one time, check this box and press the "Batch" button to set your calculations.

MetaStock folders containing your "universe" of securities - Place all of the folders that contain your universe of securities here. The folders are all taken together as one universe.

Where's the data?

For maximum flexibility, the resulting calculations are put in two places.

First, a MetaStock folder named "Broad Market Data" is created and filled with MetaStock files. This allows you to page through all of the resultant calculations.

Second, the data can be retrieved by MetaStock using the "ExtFml( "Broad Market.xxxx")" function, where xxxx is the name of calculation, such as AdvancingIssuesPercent, or CloseBelowMANumber .