Hi Vernon,
I'm no spring chicken myself, and this is my third
profession. But with a son in law school and a daughter about to start grad
school, the concept of "retirement" is one that eludes me. <VBG>
I've been trading for living now for over 15 years (and
involved with investing for 40+ years) and still love it. Like you,
I've purchased thousands of dollars of books over the years, but now am
very selective as many are truly not worth the price and often overlap very
extensively. It's not that there's nothing new under the sun, but it's
rare to find a book that I would recommend to others and now generally buy only
a few books each year. Education is a continuing need in the trading
business so you should budget some monies for new books, just like you must for
new equipment, software, and (yes) data feeds.
One of the better deals out there (IMHO) is the
Professional Traders package from the magazine TA for Stocks and Commodities
(TASC). You get a five year subscription to TASC, Traders.com Advantage, and
Working Money (the last two are online resources), the current and next
year's DVD of all TASC issues (26 Volumes, back to early 1980's), plus a
free book or hard bound volume of a year of TASC articles. It runs $495 and
is well worth it as you'll get thousands of dollars of education. see http://store.traders.com/proftradstar1.html for
more info on the package or http://traders.com/ for info about
TASC. AB code written by Tomasz pertaining to a lead article is regularly
published in the Traders Tips section of the magazine.
I'd be interested in hearing more about your use of
AAII's software and data. I've been a life member for 20+ years, but never got
their data/software package. Don't know how well it would integrate with
AB, but if one wanted to do fundamental screening and then port candidates to AB
for study, I suppose that could work.
Anyway, welcome to AB land, good luck and ask questions
as often as you need. There are a lot of good people here.
Peace and Justice ---
Patrick
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 9:30
AM
Subject: Re: [amibroker] Few Newbie
Questions re: yahoo data
Hi Patrick -
Thank you, I appreciate your reply - it's very
informative. So far, I've been very lucky in that I've broken most of
the rules/guidelines in the $1,000+ worth of books I've bought over the last
year while trying to learn 20 years of knowlege in an extremely short time
frame. But, I'm an old man (retired) and I don't have the time frame to get
the 20 years of experience over the "normal" 20 years. <smile>
What I've been doing so far with Amibroker has proven profitable, but,
like I say, I've been lucky. I guess it's about time to quit being
"penny wise and dollar foolish".
I also use Stock Investor Pro db
(American Assoc. Investors) which is updated weekly and I do have confidence
in the data that is provided - although it is weekly and contains extensive
fundamental data. I have played with the idea of using this weekly data
imported to Amibroker and then using current eod on yahoo, but I think your
correct - GIGO. At this point have been doing in the
range of 10-20 trades/month - sometimes more sometimes less, so
based on what your telling me, guess it's time I
began to "conform".
Thank you again for your very
informative and helpful explanation.
Vernon
--
ENJOY LIFE!! Keep it SIMPLE!!
Hi Vernon,
I suppose the fast answer is "It depends". On
what does it depend? Well really how are you using the data and for
what stocks.
First of all, Yahoo data is WYSIWYG, i.e. it doesn't
adjust for splits, symbol changes, etc. So if your principal use is to
acquire a historic database to back test against, do so with extreme
caution. If you are planning on maintaining a large number of symbols
to track on a day to day basis to make EOD trading decisions for trades the
next day, again the caveat "be careful and double check with another data
source before placing trades" (you broker's data is probably sufficient
here). If you are going to follow only a few (say 50 or fewer) stocks,
then it may be fine. Why? Well as I said, Yahoo data is WYSIWYG
and you will have to do all the adjustments for splits, symbol changes, etc.
which means spending some amount of time tracking down that info in press
releases, SEC filings, etc. On a large database this quickly becomes
very time consuming. Your time is a resource and is better
spent trading, preparing to trade, learning to trade, studying the markets,
etc.
Thus, if you are really trading (or even investing
by buying and selling more than a couple dozen times a year), you are better
off spending the nominal amount to buy a data service that will maintain all
that stuff for you and do so with reliable accuracy. Quotes Plus,
TeleChart 2007, Premium Data from Norgate are all reasonably priced EoD data
providers (think like a couple lattes a week) which integrate with
AB nearly seamlessly. Another route to go is
feed you broker's data to QuoteTracker and then import it into AB.
This won't give you an instant lengthy historical database, but again
depending on the number of stocks you plan to follow can be
manageable. Keep in mind also that your costs for data feeds (like
investment subscriptions and AB) is a tax deductible expense incurred to
generate income.
If you do decide to go cheap (remember the
adage "you get what you pay for" seems to have been invented for data
feeds) and stay with free Yahoo data, pay close attention to daily highs and
lows as well as open and closing prices and volume. Often there isn't
too great a difference, but if you are using indicators which are based on
these data points, be wary.
Peace and Justice ---
Patrick
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 4:30
PM
Subject: Re: [amibroker] Few Newbie
Questions re: yahoo data
Hi -
Like wise, I am a "newbee" to all this. I had
no intentions of becoming a programer, but I do like Amibroker.
While I'm learning (and losing money <kidding>), I am using
yahoo EOD data during my learning process. It appears to agree with
my Scottrade Account (although I haven't done any investigation into the
accuracy). I have no desire to use RT data - EOD is fine for
my uses.
Could someone expand or provide more information
with regard to the statement below of "yahoo EOD data being
inaccurate"? That worries me a little since
I'm investing my hard earned $$$$ using it. Thanks in
advance for any insite/information you
might provide.
As to when EOD data can be downloaded, I
generally d/l it between 6 and 7 pm ET. If "historical" d/l doesn't
pick it up, "current day" will.
Vernon
--
ENJOY LIFE!! Keep it SIMPLE!!
-----Original Message-----
From:
howardbandy@gmail.com
Sent: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 11:38:39
-0700
To: amibroker@xxxxxxxxxps.com
Subject:
Re: [amibroker] Few Newbie Questions
Hi Jchi --
High quality, low cost end-of-day data is available
from several vendors. Two I recommend (I subscribe to them both)
are:
Quotes Plus -- http://qp2.com/joomla/index.php
Norgate
Premium Data -- http://www.premiumdata.net/
Read
the reference materials related to BuyPrice, SellPrice, and
TradeDelays. They work in combination.
The pair of
statements
BuyPrice = Open;
SetTradeDelays(0,x,x,x);
uses
the price of the open of the bar being processed.
The pair of
statements
BuyPrice = Open;
SetTradeDelays(1,x,x,x);
uses
the price of the open of the bar following the bar being
processed.
Thanks,
Howard
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 3:58 PM, jchi18 <inbox.chi@xxxxxxcom>
wrote:
1. When is the earliest I can download EOD data from Yahoo? i.e.,
when will today's data be available for download?
2. In the
trades tab when performing automatic analysis, what does buy price
mean if I set it to open? i.e., I perform a scan of my trading system
and it says that a buy signal was found for 2/26/10. When it is set to
buy at the open price, will amibroker get the open price of 2/26 or
2/27?
3. What is the best but reasonably priced way of getting
accurate EOD data into amibroker? I understand that Yahoo is
inaccurate.
Feel free to contact me at inbox.chi@xxxxxxcom. THanks.
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