The Art of Shares: visualising stock market volatility
The volatility of the stock market can be difficult to understand, even for the most experienced of traders. So, to help you make sense of unpredictable share price movements, we’ve turned the chaos into stunning 3D images.
IG presents ‘The Art of Shares’, an interactive tool that enables you to create beautiful 3D sculptures out of share price data. You can make art out of some of the most interesting companies across the London Stock Exchange, Euronext and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
You can choose to create your own sculpture or take a deeper look at one of the stock market’s most infamous stories to help you to visualise the impact of political, technological and cultural events on share prices.
Creating your own share price sculpture
To generate your own share price sculpture, all you need to do is search a company’s name and the Art of Shares tool will build a piece of art using historical data from the company’s initial public offering (IPO) right through to the present day.
This data is turned into an interactive sculpture that will help you visualise the successes and failures of the company, shown in part by two arcs that represent the stock price high and low.
For example, the arc in the image below indicate Apple’s share price high of $227 in August 2018.
Explore infamous stock market stories
We have also delved into 13 of the stock markets' most infamous stories, including:
The 15-minute flash crash
On 6 May 2010, the Dow Jones lost 9% of its value over the course of 15 minutes, representing around $1 trillion worth of stocks. This is shown by the thin, sharp protrusion towards the top of the sculpture below. The cause of this momentous drop was allegedly an overly effective ‘spoofing robot’, which was designed to create fake sell orders to drive down the price of Proctor & Gamble’s E-Mini futures.
Cisco (CSCO) and the dot-com bubble
Cisco (CSCO) was once the most valuable company in the world. This is because the multinational technology company received a large amount of investment during the dot-com bubble between 1999 to 2001.
In March 2000, shares of CSCO peaked at $77.83, making it the most valuable company in the world at the time. But in the months that followed, the bubble burst and investors began dumping shares of CSCO – by March of the following year, its shares were trading at $15.81. The tech giant may have played a part in its own downfall, as CSCO issued huge sell orders on the stock market that caused further panic.
This information has been prepared by IG, a trading name of IG Markets Ltd and IG Markets South Africa Limited. In addition to the disclaimer below, the material on this page does not contain a record of our trading prices, or an offer of, or solicitation for, a transaction in any financial instrument. IG accepts no responsibility for any use that may be made of these comments and for any consequences that result. No representation or warranty is given as to the accuracy or completeness of this information. Consequently any person acting on it does so entirely at their own risk. Any research provided does not have regard to the specific investment objectives, financial situation and needs of any specific person who may receive it. It has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such is considered to be a marketing communication. Although we are not specifically constrained from dealing ahead of our recommendations we do not seek to take advantage of them before they are provided to our clients. See full non-independent research disclaimer and quarterly summary.
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