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 ----- From: vernon To: [email protected] 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!! -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] Sent: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 23:20:30 -0800 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [amibroker] Few Newbie Questions re: yahoo data 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 ----- From: vernon To: [email protected] 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: [email protected] Sent: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 11:38:39 -0700 To: [email protected] 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 <[email protected]> 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 [email protected]. 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