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Trader,
On one hand, I understand your frustration. Heck, we've all been
there before. But it seems every single one of your posts to this
group is a complaint, and every single message runs down Amibroker
relative to other programs. Here's my solution. If Metastock and
Tradestation are so much better, THAN JUST USE THEM!
Wait, wait, I know what you're going to say. You feel your gripes
are justified because you are too busy actually trading to want to
mess around with an interface that doesn't do what you need it to.
Fine, then use a program that doesn't have those problems. There are
certain features of Amibroker that make the technical analysis
process easier (like the speed of AFL, exploration, etc.). But then,
with those advantages there are obviously tradeoffs, which means that
some things take a little time or are a little complicated.
Especially given that you are trying to do all this so you can get
free data from Yahoo.
TJ, I am not trying to speak for you - you certainly have things well
under control. I just don't understand why someone seems to delight
in running this product down in a public forum and complaining about
how difficult it is to use as compared to other products in the
marketplace. And while I know that TJ doesn't mind the comparison to
software which costs many times as much, it just doesn't make any
sense to me.
Sincerely,
David Beaudoin
--- In amibroker@xxxx, traders10@xxxx wrote:
> TJ this note is part humor, part angst.
>
> How to waste an afternoon
> By Trader
>
> I wanted to evaluate how well AB can work for plotting some market
> statistics, especially the McClellan Oscillator. Lets see, I need
> some advance decline data in AB…don't have it right now.
>
> Well, it should be easy to use AmiQuote to pull some data down from
> Yahoo.
>
> Oh, yeah, I need to unzip that new version of AQ, OK... Better
> check the readme file to see if it changed a lot...looks OK for
what
> I want to do.
>
> Lets see, I'll need the Yahoo symbols for A/D data so I can D/L
with
> AQ.
>
> Go the Yahoo Web site, poke around for awhile, can't find any
symbols
> for adv or dec data, only today's numbers. Check some
more....looks
> like Yahoo does not have any symbols or historical data for adv/dec.
>
> No Problem....I have the data in two different programs on my
> workstation, I'll use that.
>
> Lets see, I do MetaStock exports from QP2 all the time. That should
> be easy.
>
> Make a small list with a few indices and adv/dec data…export to MS
> format...no problem.
>
> Ok, Import that data into AB. Whoa, what is this? AB is
> complaining about the QP2 symbols for NYSE advances !NY-A and the
> others as well. Hmmmm, different data vendors use all sort of
weird
> symbols for market statistic data, surely TJ took that into
> consideration....Hmmmm, maybe not...
>
> OK, all I want to do is display the *%*(*& data. I have an ascii
> file on my HD that gets generated every night that has the MCO
> itself. I'll import that for display. Go to ascii import wizard,
> Hmmm skip the first three lines, then just read the date and close
> data on each line...piece of cake....
>
> Whoa, 1500 errors, look around...damn, the importer wont read the
> negative values in MCO.
>
> OK, no Yahoo data available, can't get AB to import my data...time
> to send a note to TJ....
>
> Hours pass.............
>
> Get response back from TJ, thank you very much. Hmmmm either he
> does not understand the problem or else I don't understand his
> response....probably the latter.
>
> He says I should have used the "foreign" function....what the hell
is
> that????
>
> Dig into AFL reference, says "foreign" is used to display data from
a
> second data series in addition to the data currently being
> displayed. Well crap, that doesn't help.....I can't get the ^&3^%
> (* data into AB to start with.....
>
> Lets see, what else did TJ say....something about an e-mail....I
> check my regular and alias e-mail boxes.....nothing
>
> Mutter, mutter, mumble.....
>
> All I want to do is import a couple a data files into AB and get on
> with my life…this is ridiculous......
>
> Go for walk to think this thing over.....conclusion....TJ may have
a
> better idea on how to do things but this stinks. How on earth is
an
> ordinary computer literate but non programmer supposed to make this
> stuff work to do the most basic of tasks. The simple tasks have to
> be....uh, shall we say....simple????
>
> I still don't have the adv/dec data in the program and I am
beginning
> to understand why about every third request for help relates to
just
> getting some data into the program.
>
> Comparisons: getting data into Metastock is fairly easy because
most
> data vendors convert to MS format. ASCII into MS is a little
tricky,
> but the help files are pretty good.
> Tradestation/Supercharts is a no brainer for the user. They read
MS
> format, ascii, even my odd FastTrack FNU files directly....no
> importing needed. AB is a real pain in its present state of
> development if the user has to import data.
>
> TJ....keep up the good work, but HELP your users out in this area.
>
> And I still don't have adv/dec data in AB.....mutter, mutter,
> mumble....I did say it was a wasted afternoon.
>
> Trader
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