http://www.stockmapper.com/NDXtrac.html
Would be possible to develop the above chart using SVG and Javascript or some other lightweight technology i.e HTML5.0 technologies?
What sort of effort would be involved (man days)?
Would the SVG version be as fast/smooth as it's flash counterpart?
Possible? Yes.
Effort involved? For me, probably a couple of days. YMMV.
Would it be as fast/smooth as Flash? Not exactly, but probably pretty close, given that there aren't any fadeins/fadeouts, and you're only moving/resizing a polygon and a rectangle.
Cool site. I think you could indeed build this over a few days (~1-2 weeks probably more like it). However, It doesn't appear that you'd even need SVG. Could probably get away with just css-styled divs and absolute positioning and some animation. You might have to accept some compromises on things like the style of dashed lines in the charts or the fashion in which the tool-tip's pointer moves/stretches, but there's nothing that jumps out screaming "SVG" to me.
I'm looking at this site after close of the markets. Is it updating with live/delayed data throughout the day? That might make it a bit more challenging considering managing the data, but probably not terribly so.
I think that this Flash piece would easily outperform a non-flash (JS/HTML/CSS and/or SVG) piece, but perhaps not if done well.
Have a look at the examples at http://svg-wow.org, which provides freely reusable scripts (CC0 licensed) that makes it easier to use svg with animation.