I have been doing some extra homework on Yahoo as it is topical and also of personal benefit.
I am a big fan of YahoofinanceUSA for the retail investor, especially newcomers, as it has so much depth and breadth of info in one place (it is not easy for individuals to acquire and manage all this data). I regard it as the best 'financial info' value for money on the planet and predict they will soon start charging for access to some of what is free at the moment. Re +/-'s of the site: The data is acquired from the majors. They are a major force in the market themselves and have a lot to lose if they get it wrong in a big way. They have an established record. Imagine what would happen to their business if we all woke tomorrow to find GOOG at $2. We would all mortgage the house and rush off to our brokers to buy every scrap we could get our hands on and then find it is actually $419 everywhere else in town. I don't think Yahoofinance would be around too long after that. I think they would be working pretty hard to prevent that type of error. My level of confidence drops because they have to manage the compilation of vast amounts of info from several sources and for various timeframes. Opinions, however, don't constitute proof. We also should not write off all of their features because one of them is proven to contain significant errors nor write of any single feature on the basis of a small % of errors. Re Yahoo/AB/AQ Ami now has two seperate features based on Yahoo data - current data scanning and historical price data download. I am very positive about the new scanning feature, provided Tomasz goes the full monty on it. I am doing some research in the background with the intent of providing Tomasz with a good case to upgrade this feature further. I have a high level of confidence in the scanner because it relies on current data which is likely to receive more attention from Yahoo than data that is residual for months. It would also be quite easy to crosscheck data, say current dividends or earnings, with other sources. Historical price data is another matter as there is some adverse comment from AB forum members. I have recently downloaded NDX.tls (Nasdaq100) using Amiquotes. I am not sure where that list came from. I think it was an example file packaged with the AB setup. The file is dated year 2000. On download 26/100 symbols return an error message. At the Yahoo site if the symbols with error messages werw entered Yahoo says that they are "not valid ticker symbols" or in some cases "the symbol XXXX is no longer valid, it has changed to XXXX.PK". I then downloaded the first 50 symbols for ^NDX from the Yahoo components list, converted toCSV, then .txt and auto imported that into AB with 100% success using AQ. This just proves my previous argument that outdated symbols lists is a source of problems for AB users and that symbol list maintenance is an AB headache for Yahoo users in particular and most data sources use in general. It doesn'nt, however proove anything about the cleanliness of the data downloaded. I haven't done any testing of price data accuracy. So far, from memory, there is only one instance of a specific Yahoo 'price data error' reported by forum users i.e. Dave's post re SEED, but it is actually a 'hole' in the data rather than dirty data. I am following that post and will comment further there. An interesting aside is, that in the past, I have paid approx USD$100- 150 for a Yahoo data downloader as I wanted to use some international market data in backtests. I purchased a downloader to get cheap data as I didn't want to pay for a long term subscription to other markets at that stage. The downloader I bought was not a patch on AQ. Brian. P.S It looks like Richard Dales post has thrown out a challenge to the other providers. Thanks for that Richard; I will check it out. I always have to investigate wherever players in 'the stockmarket game' have made a strong effort. --- In [email protected], "matrix10014" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi all, > Just setting up Ami,for the first time and was wondering if there were > any strong feelings regarding yahoo EOD vs Quotes plus?? > > Any major benefits or drawbacks?? > > Any insight appreciated > > Allan > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Check out the new improvements in Yahoo! Groups email. http://us.click.yahoo.com/6pRQfA/fOaOAA/yQLSAA/GHeqlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Please note that this group is for discussion between users only. To get support from AmiBroker please send an e-mail directly to SUPPORT {at} amibroker.com For other support material please check also: http://www.amibroker.com/support.html Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amibroker/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
