This question isn't quite as common as it used to be, but I spoke to a member today who was getting ready to teach a class, and they noticed that the projection line for future sales was ending in a different place than the one that their assistant was seeing. As it turned out, one stock was set to show the projection line from the last annual data, while the other had been set to show the projection from the last quarterly data.

This raised the question of "why doesn't the line actually start from the end of the quarter, if that's what the setting is at?"

This is actually due in large part to the original design of the Stock Study form. The form was originally intended to measure only from the end of a year.

Since we knew that the end of quarter and end of trend line projections were popular from previous versions of Toolkit, we wanted to keep these options in, while at the same time making sure that to follow the guidelines for the way the SSG forms work going forward.

The way this works is that Toolkit will figure out the end point of a projection line, and then adjust the starting point up or down slightly on the year end vertical line so that the projection passes through the point where it would have started from if it were not anchored to the year end line.

The best way to see an illustration of this is to find a company that has had a significant change in earnings or sales between the end of the previous year and the current quarter, then adjust the settings for the SSG to see the projection line move up or down. To enable this setting for individual stocks:

1. Go to OPTIONS > PREFERENCES.
2. On the Preferences Window, choose the STOCK STUDY tab, and put a check mark in SHOW TREND LINE OPTIONS.
3. Click OK to close the Preferences window.

Now, the next time you open an SSG, and click on the main part of the SSG, or on the ADJUST GRAPH button, you will see a new button, START PROJECTION. Click this to adjust the settings for the individual stock to start the projection either from the end of the year, end of the trend line, or end of the quarter. Making a change here will only change the individual stock, so you can experiment a bit to see how these settings change the lines on the SSG.

Ford will usually show a good example of a stock with a visible difference between the end of the year, the end of the trend lin, and the end of the latest quarter.
Bringing up the SSG for Ford ( Ticker symbol F ) in Toolkit will help illustrate the adjustments that Toolkit makes to the projection line based on your settings.
With the Ford SSG open, click ADJUST GRAPH then click START PROJECTION.
On the new screen that comes up, change the settings for starting a projection line from the end of year to end of quarter, or the other way around. When you click OK to return to the SSG adjutment screen, you will see the trend line for earnings at least will shift up or down depending on which of the three options you have selected, showing that Toolkit is adjusting for the change you make to the setting for where the projection line is figured from.