I am a bit confused with some charts I see for inactive stocks, whether they are historical or intraday. On some places, like si, they will leave a gap if there is no data for that period, (end of day or intraday). However for others like AmBroker, there will totally skip the point. So for AmBroker case, for those inactive stocks, you can see that the month of March maybe has more data and longer, while May which has no trades is much shorter.

So who is correct? To skip or not to skip?

Thanks in advanced for any answers.

In my personal opinion, for days that are inactive (be it not traded or suspended), those points should be skipped.

The reason is that technical indicators will then not use these points in their calculation. For example, if a stock last traded price is 21.00 and then it did not trade for the next 20 days. What happen to the 20-day MA if these 20-days (where price reflect the last traded price) are used in the calculation. Will this not produce a wrong 20-day MA?

The software can be written to intelligently pick this up. There are some industry standards in this implementation. I shall not go into detail. Trade secret that can give my products an edge.

The software displaying the chart according to preference - showing or not showing
inactive bars. The source data file is the same.

I have requests from people who want the days with zero volume taken out of the
historical database and the daily update files. I couldn't because there are people
who wanted them included.

The solution is in the software, not the data files.

Thanks for your input. I understand better now. That means there is no right or wrong answer, and it depends on your individual preference.

Allow me to chip in.

I actually prefer to have the skip data point displayed. Reason being that will give me a better visual of the actually trading (or lack of trading) of that counter, be it trading halt or zero interest, so that I can quickly decide to trade or not to trade;and formulate my trading strategy accordingly if I decided to take that trade.

Yes, I know what you mean.

The chart can be programmed not to compress the time scale yet not show any
price point for those inactive days.