Level 3 · Charts and returns

Reading price charts and returns

What each price chart draws, how each indicator is calculated, and how returns are measured. Every chart here looks backwards at closing prices. None of it forecasts what a price will do. Past performance does not indicate future results.
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Candlesticks and chart modes

In one lineEach candle is one day: the body runs from open to close, and the thin wicks reach the high and low.
Anatomy of a green candle: the body runs from open to close, the wicks reach the high and low.HighCloseOpenLow
Left: a green day (closed above where it opened). Right: a red day (closed below). Shapes are illustrative.

A green candle closed above where it opened. A red candle closed below it. The stock chart has two modes: Area draws the closing price as a line, and Candles draws every day. Hovering shows the open (O), high (H), low (L), close (C) and volume (Vol) for that day.

The chart uses split- and bonus-adjusted prices, so the history stays continuous. The optional vs Nifty 50 overlay plots the index rescaled to start at the stock's first price, so both lines share one scale.

Volume and turnover

In one lineVolume is how many shares changed hands. Turnover is the rupee value of those trades.

The bars under the price are daily volume, coloured green on days the close was above the open and red otherwise. The summary tiles show average volume over 20 sessions (a simple mean of the last 20 days) and the latest session's turnover in ₹ crore.

Illustrative example: turnover

On a day when 10 lakh shares trade at an average ₹250, turnover is about ₹25 crore (10,00,000 × 250 = ₹25,00,00,000).

Volume describes activity. A day with high volume is a day with many trades, and it says nothing about the direction of the next session.

Moving averages (50 and 200 DMA)

In one lineA moving average is the mean of the last N closing prices. The 50-day line is gold and the 200-day line is blue on the chart.
SMA(N) on day t = (close on day t + close on day t−1 + … + close on day t−N+1) ÷ N
Illustrative example: a 3-day average

Closes of ₹10, ₹12 and ₹11 over three sessions: (10 + 12 + 11) ÷ 3 = ₹11.

A moving average is smoother than the daily price, because each day's move is averaged with the days before. It lags the price by design. The stock page reports where the price sits relative to each line, for example "Price above 200-day average", and whether the 50-day line is above the 200-day line.

These are descriptions of past prices. ScripLens does not attach a trading meaning to a line crossing another, and no figure on the site says that a crossing predicts a move.

RSI (14)

In one lineThe Relative Strength Index measures how strongly recent days were up compared with how strongly they were down, on a scale of 0 to 100.

ScripLens uses Wilder's smoothing with a 14-session period, on adjusted closing prices:

gain = max(change, 0), loss = max(−change, 0)
avg gain and avg loss: first 14 sessions simple means; then avg = (previous avg × 13 + today) ÷ 14
RS = avg gain ÷ avg loss
RSI = 100 − 100 ÷ (1 + RS)
Illustrative example: reading an RSI of 70

Average gain 1.4 and average loss 0.6 over the last 14 sessions. RS = 1.4 ÷ 0.6 = 2.33.

RSI = 100 − 100 ÷ (1 + 2.33) = 70.

The stock page draws RSI on a 0 to 100 bar and names two thresholds: above 70 and below 30. These are conventional labels for a momentum reading. They describe the pace of recent moves. They do not say what the price will do next, and a stock can stay above 70 or below 30 for a long time.

52-week range

In one lineThe 52-week range is the lowest and highest prices over the last year. The bar on the stock page shows where today's close sits in it.
% from 52-week high = (latest close ÷ 52-week high − 1) × 100
Illustrative example: 52-week position

52-week low ₹80, high ₹120, latest close ₹105. Position in the range: (105 − 80) ÷ (120 − 80) = 62.5% of the way up.

% from the 52-week high: 105 ÷ 120 − 1 = −12.5%.

The range uses the daily high and low prices, not closing prices, so the 52-week high can be above any close. The small labels under the bar show how long ago the high and low were set.

Drawdown and recovery

In one lineA drawdown is how far the price has fallen from its highest previous close. Recovery is the time it takes to get back to that high.
Illustrative price path: a peak at 200, a fall to 120 (a 40 per cent drawdown), then a recovery back to 200.peak 200trough 120back to peak 200
Drawdown from the peak: 120 is 40% below 200. Getting back to 200 needs a gain of 66.7% from 120.
drawdown(t) = (close(t) ÷ highest close up to and including day t) − 1, shown as a percentage

The stock page's risk section shows the three deepest falls since the data begins, with the peak and trough dates, how long the recovery took, the current fall from the peak, and a chart of how far the price sits below its previous peak through time.

Drawdowns use closing prices, while the 52-week range uses high and low prices, so the two can differ slightly.

Absolute return and CAGR

In one lineAbsolute return is the total change over a period. CAGR spreads that change into a steady yearly rate.
absolute return = (end value ÷ start value − 1) × 100
CAGR = ((end value ÷ start value)^(1 ÷ years) − 1) × 100
Illustrative example: absolute return

₹10,000 becomes ₹13,000: (13,000 ÷ 10,000 − 1) × 100 = 30%. Over five years, that is not the same as 30% a year.

Illustrative example: CAGR

₹10,000 becomes ₹16,105 over five years: (16,105 ÷ 10,000)^(1 ÷ 5) − 1 = 1.10 − 1 = 10.0% a year.

Check: ₹10,000 growing 10% a year for five years is ₹10,000 × 1.1⁵ = ₹16,105.

CAGR is a smoothed summary. The real path can be bumpy, with large rises and falls that average out. Two stocks with the same CAGR can have very different drawdowns.

The 1 to 5 year tiles on the stock page are price CAGRs, split- and bonus-adjusted and excluding dividends. The screener's 3-year and 5-year CAGR columns count 248 trading days as a year. Year counts elsewhere on the site use calendar dates.

Total return

In one lineTotal return adds dividends and bonus or split shares to the price change, so it shows what a holder would have had.

The total-return view on the stock page shows three cases: price only (the chart view), with dividends as cash (each dividend is set aside as cash on its ex-date), and dividends reinvested (each dividend buys more shares at that day's close). Bonus and split shares are added to the holding on their ex-dates.

Illustrative example: a bonus and a dividend

You buy 100 shares at ₹100, so ₹10,000 is invested. A 1:1 bonus gives you 200 shares.

A ₹3 dividend is paid on the 200 shares: ₹600. The price is ₹60 at the end.

Price only: 200 × ₹60 = ₹12,000, a gain of 20%.

With dividends as cash: ₹12,000 + ₹600 = ₹12,600, a gain of 26%.

The calculation does not include taxes, brokerage, charges or the cost of reinvesting. Demergers are not tracked, and the view says so when one falls in the period. Rights issues and buybacks are optional for a holder and are not modelled.

Lumpsum, SIP and XIRR

In one lineFor one investment on one date, the calculator uses CAGR. For monthly investments, it uses XIRR, because the money went in at different times.

The "What if you had invested?" calculator on the stock page runs two cases. A lumpsum is one amount on the first available day. A SIP puts the same amount in on the first trading day of each month. Results are price-only and use adjusted prices.

XIRR is the rate r where Σ cash flow ÷ (1 + r)^((date − first date) ÷ 365.25) = 0
(outflows are negative; the final value of the holding is a positive inflow)

A SIP's first instalment has been invested for the longest time and its last has been invested for only a month. Dividing the total gain by the years would ignore that. XIRR gives each instalment its own holding period, and the result is the annual rate that the whole series of cash flows implies. ScripLens calculates it with a bisection search, which narrows a range by halving it until the answer is found.

Stock versus index

In one lineRelative strength divides the stock by an index. A rising line means the stock moved more than the index over that stretch.
relative strength (rebased) = (stock ÷ stock on start day) ÷ (index ÷ index on start day) × 100

The Stock vs index section draws two views: Growth of ₹100 (both the stock and the index started at 100) and Relative strength (the stock divided by the index, starting at 100). It shows the return over 1 month, 6 months and 1 year, the 3-year and 5-year figures annualised, the difference between stock and index, and calendar-year returns.

It also reports risk statistics: beta, correlation, volatility, the worst fall, up and down capture, and how many months the stock finished ahead of the index. These use weekly returns, so their volatility can differ from the daily-return figure in the risk section. Definitions are in Risk and statistics.

Delivery %

In one lineDelivery % is the share of a day's traded quantity that was taken for delivery rather than bought and sold within the same session.
Illustrative example: delivery

On a day when 10 lakh shares are traded and 6 lakh are marked for delivery, delivery % is 60%. The other 4 lakh were squared off within the day.

The Delivery chart shows the daily figure and a 20-day average. The average needs at least 10 days with a figure. The data comes from NSE's daily security-wise files for the EQ and BE series.

Delivery % is a market statistic. It describes how a day's trading was settled. It is not an indicator of future price, and a high or low figure does not mean the price will rise or fall.

Dividend history

In one lineThe dividend history lists each payment by its ex-date and restates it in today's share terms, so payments from different years can be compared.
  • In today's shares divides out later bonus issues and splits. As declared shows the amount as announced then.
  • Yield then is the dividend divided by the close on its ex-date.
  • Paid every year for counts consecutive financial years, up to the last complete one, with at least one dividend.
  • Raised dividend for counts consecutive complete years in which the restated per-share dividend rose.
  • 5-year dividend CAGR compares the last complete year with the one five years earlier, in today's share terms.

Records start in 2005 and the oldest can be incomplete. A missing split makes early "today's shares" amounts too high. Past dividends do not indicate future dividends.

Market-wide views

In one lineThe Markets page counts how many stocks sit in each state on the latest trading day. It describes the whole market. It is not a forecast.
  • Market pulse shows the share of stocks above their 200-day average, above their 50-day average, and with a positive return over the last year. It also shows the median 1-year return and how many stocks sit within 5%, 5 to 20%, 20 to 40%, or more than 40% below their 52-week high.
  • Sector heatmap draws one tile per sector, sized by market cap and coloured by the price change (1 day) or the return over the chosen period. The colour scale stops at a set percentage, shown in the note, so one extreme move does not wash out the rest.
  • Top gainers, top losers and most active list the largest one-day changes and the highest turnover. They are sorted lists of recorded moves, not recommendations.

Valuation history

In one lineThe valuation history plots a stock's P/E and P/B week by week, then places today's value among those weekly readings.

Each week is sampled at its last trading day. P/E is the weekly price divided by trailing EPS, which is the last four quarters when they are consecutive and published, or otherwise the latest annual EPS. P/B is the market cap divided by the latest published equity. A filing counts only from its public date, which is assumed to be 45 days after a quarter ends and 60 days after a year ends, so the history never uses information before it was available.

The summary says where today's value sits among the weekly readings, for example "higher than 80% of weekly readings since". Weeks with negative trailing earnings have no P/E and are counted separately. The chart needs at least about a year of weekly readings. It describes history only and is not a valuation call.

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Level 4: Risk, statistics and models →

Educational explanations only, not investment advice, research or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. Past performance does not indicate future results. Every example uses made-up round numbers. Read the Disclaimer before relying on any figure.