How to Make a Stock Graph in Excel

Creating a stock chart in Excel is a quick way to visualize market trends for a single security or an entire portfolio. Instead of just staring at rows of numbers, you can instantly see price action, volatility, and trading volume over time. This guide will walk you through a step-by-step process for organizing your data and turning it into a clear, professional stock graph.

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First, Which Stock Chart Is Right For You?

Excel offers four primary types of stock charts, each designed to answer different questions about a stock's performance. The right one depends on how much detail you need and what data you have available. They build on each other, from a simple price range to a comprehensive daily view.

• High-Low-Close: This is the simplest stock chart. It uses three data points to draw a vertical line representing the trading range for the day (from the low to the high) with a small tick mark showing the closing price. It’s perfect for a quick overview of price volatility.
• Open-High-Low-Close (OHLC): Also known as a "candlestick chart" or "bar chart," this type adds the opening price. This creates a "body" (the rectangle between the open and close price) and "wicks" (the lines showing the high and low). The color of the body typically shows whether the price went up or down for the day, making it easy to spot daily sentiment at a glance.
• Volume-High-Low-Close: This chart adds trading volume into the mix. It displays the High-Low-Close chart on top and adds a second chart below showing volume as vertical bars. This is powerful because it lets you see the strength behind a price move. A big price jump on high volume is more significant than one on low volume.
• Volume-Open-High-Low-Close: The most comprehensive of the group, this chart combines the detailed price action of the OHLC candlestick with the volume data below. It gives you a complete picture of the price movement, sentiment, and the conviction behind that movement for each period.

Step 1: Get Your Stock Data Ready

Excel is very particular about how your data is structured for stock charts to work correctly. A well-organized sheet is the foundation for a good graph. If your data isn't in the right order, the chart option will likely be grayed out or the visualization will look completely wrong.

You can typically download historical stock data as a CSV file from sources like Yahoo Finance or Google Finance, or from your brokerage account.

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The Right Column Order is Crucial

Before you do anything else, you must arrange your data columns in a specific order from left to right. Depending on the chart you want to create, you’ll need one of the following setups:

For a High-Low-Close chart: Date | High | Low | Close

For an Open-High-Low-Close candlestick chart: Date | Open | High | Low | Close

If you want to include Volume, it must come before the price data: Date | Volume | Open | High | Low | Close

Your finished spreadsheet should look something like this:

Make sure your dates are formatted as actual dates in Excel, not just text. You can verify this by selecting the column, going to the "Home" tab, and ensuring the Number format is set to "Date."

Step 2: How to Make a Basic (High-Low-Close) Stock Chart

Let’s start with the simplest version. This graph will show you the daily trading range and where the stock closed within that range.

1. Select Your Data: Click and drag your cursor to highlight the cells containing your dates and your High, Low, and Close data, including the headers.
2. Go to the Insert Tab: In the top ribbon, click on Insert.
3. Find the Charts Group: Look for the "Charts" section of the ribbon. Click the small icon for Insert Waterfall, Funnel, Stock, Surface, or Radar Chart.
4. Choose the Stock Chart: A dropdown menu will appear. Hover over Stock, and you'll see the four options. Select High-Low-Close.

Excel will instantly generate the stock chart and place it on your worksheet. You’ll see vertical lines for each day's price range and a marker indicating the closing price.

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Step 3: Creating an Advanced Candlestick (OHLC) Chart

A candlestick chart gives you much more context by showing whether the stock finished the day higher or lower than it started. This is the preferred chart for most traders and analysts.

The process is nearly identical, but you need to include the "Open" price data.

1. Select the Right Data: Highlight your data columns, making sure you include Date, Open, High, Low, and Close in that specific order.
2. Insert the Chart: Go to Insert > Waterfall, Funnel, Stock... > Stock.
3. Choose Open-High-Low-Close: This time, select the second option, Open-High-Low-Close.

Excel will produce a candlestick chart. You’ll notice that each bar now has a thicker body. By default, white (or unfilled) bodies mean the closing price was higher than the open (a positive day), and black (or filled) bodies mean the close was lower than the open (a negative day).

Step 4: How to Add Trading Volume to Your Chart

To really understand a stock's moves, you need to see the trading volume. Adding this layer requires your data to have a "Volume" column placed correctly before the price data.

1. Check Your Column Order: Before starting, make sure your columns are arranged as Date | Volume | Open | High | Low | Close.
2. Select All Data: Highlight your entire data set, including the headers.
3. Insert the Volume Chart: Navigate to Insert > Waterfall, Funnel, Stock... > Stock one more time.
4. Select Volume-Open-High-Low-Close: Choose the last option in the list.

Excel will now automatically create a combination chart. You’ll have the detailed candlestick chart on top and a corresponding bar chart at the bottom representing the daily trading volume. This allows you to easily correlate price swings with periods of high or low trading activity.

Step 5: Customizing Your Chart For Better Analysis

A default Excel chart is functional, but a few tweaks can make it much easier to read and present.

Changing Chart Title

The default title is usually unhelpful. Just double-click on "Chart Title" directly on the chart and type something more descriptive, like "AAPL Stock Performance - Q4 2023."

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Adjusting Colors (Up vs. Down Days)

The black-and-white convention for candlesticks can feel a bit dated. Most analysts prefer green for up days and red for down days.

1. Click on one of the "up" candles (the white ones by default) to select the series.
2. Right-click and choose Format Data Series. A panel will open on the right.
3. Click the paint bucket icon (Fill & Line). Under "Fill," choose "Solid Fill" and select a green color.
4. Now, click a "down" candle (the black ones) and repeat the process, choosing a red color instead.

Adding a Moving Average

A moving average smooths out price data to help you identify the underlying trend. It's a fundamental analysis tool and is easy to add in Excel.

1. Click on your chart to select it. This will bring up two contextual tabs: Chart Design and Format.
2. Go to the Chart Design tab.
3. On the far left, click Add Chart Element, then hover over Trendline and click Moving Average. Important: Excel will ask which series you want to base it on, choose your "Close" or "High" price series.
4. To adjust the period (e.g., from the default 2-day to a 50-day moving average), right-click the new moving average line on your chart, select Format Trendline, and change the "Period" number in the panel on the right.

Final Thoughts

Creating stock graphs in Excel transforms raw price data into an actionable visual story, from simple high-low-close charts to comprehensive candlestick charts with volume. By correctly formatting your data and using the built-in chart types, you can easily track performance, spot potential trends, and bring your analysis to life without needing complex software.

Of course, manually downloading CSVs and building these charts every week can become tedious, especially when you're tracking multiple stocks or connecting this data to advertising performance. We created Graphed to remove this friction. We allow you to connect all your business data sources in one place and then build real-time, interactive dashboards just by describing what you want to see. Instead of wrangling spreadsheets, you get instant answers and spend your time finding insights, not just pulling reports.