Open High Low Close Cart in Excel

Stock Charts with Open and Close Tickmarks

The best approach then is to use the OHLC chart style found in newspapers. These have a vertical line to
indicate the spread from low to high during a trading period, with a small tickmark to the left indicating the
opening price and a small tickmark to the right at the closing price. Excel has a High-Low-Close stock chart with
the vertical line and a single tickmark, to the right, to signify closing price. But no leftward tickmark.

So we must resort to some smoke and mirrors. Actually, some short horizontal error bars will serve as our
tickmarks.

Start with the data arranged in the same way, but create a line chart instead of a stock chart.

Select any series in the chart, go to the Chart Tools > Layout tab, click on Lines, and choose High-Low Lines.
Format the High and Low series to remove the line color.

Change the Open and Close series to XY: right click on each series in turn, select Change Chart Type, and
choose an XY type.
These XY points don’t line up and there are misaligned secondary axes, but this is simple to fix. Format both XY
series to assign them to the primary axis.

Format the Open and Close series to hide the markers.

Select the Open and Close series in turn, and add error bars. There are no markers to click on, but if you select
the chart you can find the Chart Element selector on the Chart Tools > Layout and Format tabs. The Chart
Element selector and the pop-up tool tip are highlighted with a red border in this screen shot. This is a handy tool
to add to your arsenal.
Use the Chart Element selector to select the Open and Close series, one at a time. (You could also select a
visible series or another visible chart element, and use the up or down arrows to cycle through the chart’s
elements until the desired series is selected.)

With the series selected, go to the Chart Tools > Layout tab, select Error Bars, and choose one of the options. I
simply used the Standard Error option, since it was easier to add everything and adjust or remove the parts as
needed. Repeat for both Open and Close.

Reminds me of a swarm of starfighters from Star Wars.

Select the vertical (Y) error bars for each series. You may want to use the Chart Element selector for this.
Select the vertical (Y) error bars, and remove them by pressing the Delete key.

Select the “Open” X Error Bars, and press Ctrl+1 to open the Format dialog. Select the Minus direction and the
No Cap end style, and enter a fixed value of 0.4.

Select the “Close” X Error Bars, and press Ctrl+1 to open the Format dialog. Select the Plus direction and the No
Cap end style, and enter a fixed value of 0.4.

The vertical lines are one unit (one trading period) apart, so 0.4 reaches almost halfway to the next vertical line
on either side.
This style of OHLC chart works well in black and white, and after the first time you go through the protocol, it
doesn’t take too long to set up.