Q-7: I joined the opening and closing points of the "growth"-line and the result was not as I had expected parallel to the IC-RR line?

A-7: That is correct. The IC-RR line is not a simple parallel; it is complex. The visual representation of the rate of returns will vary in slope depending on where it is anchored on the right-hand side. Each anchor has a unique slope associated with it to reflect the different quantifications involved.

Q-8: If the PE numbers are not just clutter, can you give an example where they add explanation to a map?

A-8: See picture example of XYZ company ...here. In this picture the nominal-line drops away quite sharply. If you were mistakenly basing a judgement on just this bit of snail's spoor, you might conclude that the return rate from this stock was negative 40% or worse over the course of the map. That would be quite wrong, as you can detect from the virtually horizontal IC-RR line, and the paRETURN-RATE of 0%. Yes indeed the current quotation is only about 60% of the opening price, but the "growth"-line reveals that around 40% of the opening price has been incrementally returned from the stock. This surely needs some explaining! And that explanation comes from the PE, which has increased so vastly as to be a strong indication that much of the returns have not come from earnings, but from equity. To sell at the current quotation would not, after all, be as great a loss as imagined, but instead a rather flat result in simple terms, and of course not in pace with inflation or alternative opportunities lost.

Q-9: Why are pictures not up to the minute with 'live' transaction information?

A-9: The primary purpose of the pictures is longer-term in-depth analysis, a concept that does not sit well with, or at least is quite different to, live movement tracking. Specifically, it is the goal of longer-term in-depth analysis to defeat the "data deluge", not submit to its obscurantism. It attempts to iron out the very oscillations from week to week, day to day, minute to minute, second to second, that 'snail-spoor' movement charting wallows in. This smoothing effect can be noted as being far less wriggly, as being far less obscure in revealing trends, even in shorter period spans, and becomes supremely more emphatic on long term trends. The ultimate depiction of this smoothing is, of course, the definitive straightness of the IC-RR line.