StockTouch – interactive stock monitoring tool

Financial markets have always been an area of rapid innovation, with the evolution of graphical stock information being no exception. It looks like the famous stock-ticker could be replaced with the stock-toucher. A new iPad application by Visible Market Inc. provides an excellent example of the use of highly aggregated color graphics and touch-interaction. Here is the main UI showing 9 sectors and the 100 largest stocks (by market capitalization) in each sector:

Market Overview by Sector, 100 largest market cap companies per sector, color-coded heat-map of volume changes.

You can zoom in (expand- or tap-gesture), zoom out (pinch-gesture) to navigate between levels (market, sector, company) or use the auto-complete search-box for a list of company names matching the search string.

The 10*10 items can be organized either alphabetically or by market cap. Display is of Price or Volume changes between current values compared to a variable time-period (time-frame slider with values {1D, 1W, 1M, 3M, 6M, 1Y, 5Y}) at the company level and averages at the sector level.

From their website:

“Our vision for StockTouch is that it represents the first of a new genre of apps that look at the financial markets in new, powerful and useful ways. It is our belief that the act of touching and diving into data will change the way users engage with this data, and consequently translate it into information and knowledge.”

Price changes of 100 largest market cap companies by sector, Green-Red color-coded heat-map. Note market trends for three timeframes: Last month (green = advance), last week (mixed), last day (red = retreat).

The use of colors is particularly useful for Price changes: There is a heat map from light green (strong positive change) via darker tones (gray = neutral, no change) to light reds (strong negative change). This shows at a glance how the entire sector or market is doing. In the above example the last month saw a broad advance (majority of companies across all sectors in green); the last week more of a mixed bag, and the last day a broad retreat across the entire market (almost all red). Think about how much information is aggregated into this dashboard! 900 companies, grouped by sector, sorted by market cap, color-coded for price/volume change. No wonder they post a quote on their website:

“StockTouch tells you more in five seconds than you would learn reading financial news all day.”