How to use Heat Maps

The Heat Map tool gives a colourful visual view on companies that are moving in the market. If you want to find which company share prices have risen or fallen, where the big director deals have occurred, which shares have the best financial ratios and much more, the Heat Maps provide an easy-to-use way of highlighting the relevant market information.

How to Use

The first step is to select a data set, eg a country followed by an index (e.g. FTSE 100 or Techmark), sector or market from the options in the control panel.

Then select the data type that you want to use (e.g. Share Performance, Growth Ratios, Director Deals, etc).

Next select the specific data point that you want to see in the Heat Map (e.g. if you have already selected Growth Ratios as your data type you can now choose from EPS Growth, Dividend Growth, Turnover Growth, etc).

Finally, choose whether to sort the results by ticker or by data value.

The resulting Heat Map will show the information based on the options you selected in the control panel. A colour key is shown along the top of the Heat Map. The colours range from a deep red through to a deep blue. The deeper the blue, the better the data point. The deeper the red, the worse the data point.

The company’s ticker, which is found on the left hand side of each column, links you to the company research page. Also, if you hold your mouse over a ticker without clicking, the company name will be displayed.

Data available

There are dozens of data points available to view as a Heat Map, all grouped according to type. The following key data types are available:

Growth Ratios
Income Ratios
Valuation Ratios
Share Performance
Technical Analysis
Management Effectiveness
Profitability
Profit/Loss Account
Balance Sheet
Company Basics
Director Deals
Broker Recommendation

So, to find EPS Growth, Turnover Growth, Dividend Growth, etc you would look in the Growth Ratios. To find Price Rise/Fall, Trade Value, Beta, etc you would look in Share Performance. For buy and sell signals, you would look in Technical Analysis, and so on.