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Integrating your market data with TraderCode
TraderCode provides the flexibility to allow you to use your external market data for analysis, charting and backtesting. You may have obtained your market data by exporting data to a csv file from some existing trading tool or you may have purchased an entire collection of historical data from some well-known data vendors. In any of the cases above, TraderCode allows you to make use of these data very quickly and easily.
Basic Tutorial on using your market data with TraderCode
This tutorial shows how you can use the Technical Analysis Expert (or Backtesting Expert) from TraderCode with your market data. You can integrate the data with TraderCode by simply using the Copy and Paste function of Microsoft Excel. There are no additional software user interfaces or import libraries required.
1. First, go to the "Resources" subdirectory in TraderCode. By default this directory is located at:
C:\Program Files\TraderCode Technical Indicators\Resources
2. There are two spreadsheets located in this directory.
- iTechnicalAnalysisExpert.xls - For technical analysis on your market data.
- iBackTestingExpert.xls - For strategy backtesting on your market data. This spreadsheet is not available in the Standard Edition of TraderCode.
These two spreadsheets are similar to the Technical Analysis Expert and Strategy Backtesting Expert launched from your Windows Start Menu. Here, the assumption is that you have your own data that you will like to use, instead of downloading data automatically. We are going to make use of the Technical Analysis Expert in this tutorial. The same procedures also work for the Strategy Backtesting Expert.
3. Launch the iTechnicalAnalysisExpert.xls spreadsheet by double clicking on the file. The first worksheet that you will see is shown in the diagram below. It is the "DownloadedData" worksheet.
You can copy data from any csv (comma separated values) files or any spreadsheets to this worksheet for technical analysis using the Expert. The format of the data is shown in the diagram. If you do not have any market data, simply use the default data in the worksheet to test out the spreadsheet.
4. Next, go to the "AnalysisInput" worksheet and click on the "Analyze" button. This will generate the different technical indicators into the "AnalysisOutput" worksheet. You may notice that this worksheet is exactly the same as the one you use in the Technical Analysis Expert. The "ChartInput" worksheet is used for generating charts on the technical indicators generated.
You have seen how to integrate your own market data with TraderCode in this tutorial. It is simply copying and pasting data into the Technical Analysis Expert (or Strategy Backtesting Expert) spreadsheet.
Downloading market data from Google Finance
This tutorial shows how you can download market data from Google Finance after which you can integrate with TraderCode for analysis and backtesting.
1. Launch your internet browser and go to http://www.google.com/finance. This is the main index page for Google finance.
2. Enter "Google" in the search box and click on the "Get quotes" button. You will see a webpage with a lot of financial information about Google.
3. Click on the "Historical prices" link of the webpage as shown in the diagram below.
4. You will see a webpage of the daily historical prices of Google.
5. Click on the "Download to spreadsheet" link to download the data to a spreadsheet.
6. Open the file using Microsoft Excel and you will see the historical data in a spreadsheet as shown in the diagram below.
You will need to sort the data by the Date column. This can be achieved by selecting all the cells as shown in the diagram above and clicking on the "Sort" button in Excel. In the popup dialog, select to sort the data by "Date" in the order of "Oldest to Newest".
7. You can now copy and paste the data into TraderCode integration spreadsheet as discussed in the basic tutorial above for technical analysis or strategy backtesting.
Back to TraderCode Technical Indicators and Technical Analysis
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