A Chart With No Time Axis
Most price charts plot one point per day, so every tiny wiggle gets its own space on the chart — even days where nothing meaningful happened. A Point & Figure (P&F) chart throws that idea out. Instead of "one column per day," it uses "one column per meaningful move." Days where the price barely changes simply don't show up.
Reading the X's and O's
A P&F chart is built from stacked columns of two symbols:
- X — the price is rising. Each new X in the column means the price climbed by another "box."
- O — the price is falling. Each new O means it dropped by another box.
The chart only starts a new column — switching from X to O or O to X — once the price reverses by a set number of boxes. Until that reversal happens, the current column just keeps growing.
The Two Settings That Shape the Chart
- Box Size — how big a move counts as "one box," shown as a percentage of the current price. A smaller box size (e.g. 0.25%) shows more detail and more columns; a larger one (e.g. 3%) shows only big moves.
- Reversal — how many boxes the price must move against the current trend before a new column starts. The default is 3 boxes, which is a good balance between responsiveness and filtering noise.
Why This Matters for Funds and Stocks
A mutual fund's NAV can move by fractions of a rupee every single day. On a normal line chart, that turns into a jagged, hard-to-read line. On a P&F chart, only the moves that clear your chosen box size actually register — so what you see is the underlying trend, not the daily static.
Where You'll See This
Every chart-based feature on QuantLogIQ — the fund/stock detail page, the Compare tool, the RS Matrix, and the In-Out backtest — is built on top of this same P&F engine. Understanding X's, O's, box size, and reversal here makes every other tool easier to read.