Hi, I was thinking to buy Tableau Pro it but isn't cheap. How many similar software are there so that I can play with 100s of chart types?? Also, could anybody suggest which software might have been used to prepare the table below. thanks!
You can try to look into TIBCO Spotfire Silver. They were letting people try it out for free months ago. Tableau is much prettier than Spotfire but Spotfire is very easy to use.
Spotfire is better than tableau, though I'm not buying either for now. For anyone interested, this is a good list of software: http://www.kdnuggets.com/software/visualization.html
Actually, Excel 2010 can do this via improved "data bars" and "sparklines" features. The spark-bar charts may require some coding and/or effort to try, but definitely the shaded bars is no problem.
There are many smart new applications for the visualization of financial data. In the future, hopefully, we will be looking at data visualization vehicles that are a lot smarter than bars, candles, profiles and data tables. One such example is this Market Heads Up Display (HUD) that takes information from 7 different time frames, reports the balance of trade and such items as trade velocity - also provides specific scalper reference prices for entry, exit and stop. This app updates every tick and the pie charts show the actual surges of buying and selling volumes that drive price throughout the session.
R (which is free) If anyone knows of a nifty chart or graph that can't be done in R, please post. There's a few I've imagined that do not exist, but most are feasible.
I tried R but it was frustrating. A simple heatmap which takes few clicks in Excel can take full weekend in R. Most of the stuff I (and most non-quant) traders need is overwhelmingly simple. What takes 100 lines to backtest in Multicharts can take... well, lots of sweat.. in R (or matlab for that matters). If you can provide links to some newsgroups/resources on R graphics it will be much appreciated.
Always go with scriptable apps that are SPECIFIC to your problem/need. These are known as Application-specific programming languages. Generic programs like Excel and R and Matlab are only productive if you are a real expert in them.