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Dear Trader,
I understand that critics is fine and I appreciate receiving
valuable feedback from the users that helps me making
AmiBroker better.
I agree that AmiBroker is not perfect and some areas
may be improved.
However I can not agree with certain statements from your
e-mail simply because they are NOT TRUE.
I will go through your e-mail in details to show what I mean:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <traders10@xxxx>
>To: <amibroker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 1:59 AM
>Subject: [amibroker] data import
>
> [...]
>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.
That's true, Yahoo does not provide *historical* advance/decline information
therefore it is not possible to get them with AmiQuote since it works only with Yahoo.
>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...
NOT TRUE!
I have created the ticker list in QP2 (see attached) with !NY-A, !NY-AV,
!NY-D, !NY-DV, !NY-U, !NY-UV and used both Metastock export
and ASCII export from QP2.
Then I imported these data without ANY problems to AmiBroker using
Metastock importer and ASCII importer.
Not a single glitch!!!!
You obviously made some mistake, because AmiBroker accepts perfectly
!NY-* symbols.
>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.
That's true that ASCII importer checks if stock price is not negative
and will refuse adding such quotes. The main reason for this is
that certain T/A calculations require positive prices. For example
logarithmic chart could only be displayed from positive prices.
There is no big sense in importing indicator values as quotes into AmiBroker.
>OK, no Yahoo data available, can't get AB to import my data...time
>to send a note to TJ....
>Hours pass.............
Actually I responded after 3 hours 30 minutes. Please note that
we are living in different time zones and it was 21:40 (the night)
in Poland. Do you think you would receive the answer from
Tradestation or Metastock guys on Friday night????
>
>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.....
I *did* understand and what I write is not a crap.
The McClellan Oscillator is a market breadth indicator that is based on the smoothed difference
between the number of advancing and declining issues
on the New York Stock Exchange.
Therefore once you imporetd advancing/declining issues as a separate
"artificial" tickers like "!NY-A" and "!NY-D" the formula for McClellan osciallator
requires using foreign function, as shown below:
Graph0 = Ema( foreign("!NY-A", "C")-foreign("!NY-D", "C"), 19 ) - Ema( foreign("!NY-A", "C")-foreign("!NY-D", "C"), 39 );
>[..]
>
>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????
You forgot the fact that there are several data sources that all
serve advance/decline data in a different way. Once you limit yourself
(or the program you are developing) to a SINGLE data source you
CAN make things very simple.
AmiBroker is not tied to any particular data source. It provides a flexible
solution capable of handling ANY exchange in the world.
There ARE some other exchanges than US ones!
The cost for flexibility is an additional setup step needed to make things
work. I am doing my best to explain the steps required for different data
sources/exchanges. But I agree that VHS video, step-by-step, "first plug-in the
power cord into the socket"-instructions would be better.
>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.
This was true until the version 3.6. The tutorials given in the User's guide
accompanying version 3.6 make things better and I am working on
improving both manual and the program to make things simpler
(while maintaining flexibility)
>Comparisons: getting data into Metastock is fairly easy because most
>data vendors convert to MS format.
That's true - but this does not mean that Metastock is OK. All this means
is that DATA VENDORS are OK, providing the data that you can
use without the conversion.
By the way: AmiBroker reads Metastock data right out of the box.
So what is the advantage of MS?????
>ASCII into MS is a little tricky,
>but the help files are pretty good.
Do you think so? Do you think MS Downloader is that good?
I don't want to comment MS Downloader but the users of this
tool certainly would say something about its friendliness, ease of use
and performance...
Why don't you mention that MS ASCII importer is limited
to a particular field order?
>Tradestation/Supercharts is a no brainer for the user. They read MS
>format, ascii, even my odd FastTrack FNU files directly....no
>importing needed.
AmiBroker also reads MS format and ASCII. Why don't you mention
that AmiBroker imports the ASCII/Metastock data much faster
than MS/Tradestation.
>AB is a real pain in its present state of
>development if the user has to import data.
I don't think so. I agree that things could be made simpler
but "real pain" is not fair at all.
>TJ....keep up the good work, but HELP your users out in this area.
I am helping all the time.
As to the comparisons to other product:
1. Metastock - are you really so happy with it?
Have you upgraded to the version 7.2? What do you think about
paying for the upgrade more than you pay for full AmiBroker license
and 5 free major AmiBroker upgrades?
Why can not you back test multiple securities in Metastock?
Have you contacted Equis support? Are you happy with the reponses?
Why can not you use variable periods as parameters of functions in Metastock Formula Language?
Why are you forced to use PREV function that is SO SLOW?
Can you create sophisticated cross-market indicators as the one Dimitris Tsokakis posts
from time to time to the AFL library?
....
2. Tradestation/Omega Research - how much you paid for the latest version?
Have you contacted their support? Are you happy with the responses?
Why they dropped EOD version? How much it cost for the upgrade?
Do you think EasyLanguage is fast?
Can you create sophisticated cross-market indicators as the one Dimitris Tsokakis posts
from time to time to the AFL library?
As a final word:
Thank you once again for your e-mail. I agree that there is much place
for the improvement and I promise to work on it.
I always deliver what my customers want.
These are not just words it is proven by history of AmiBroker development.
And as for advances/declines - I will describe the topic in details in the next
issue of the newsletter.
Best regards,
Tomasz Janeczko
===============
AmiBroker - the comprehensive share manager.
http://www.amibroker.com
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