Hi,
Over the last several weeks, I’ve posted questions
about Quotes Plus data. This a quick report on what’s
happened so far.
When I started using AB again in April, I used TeleChart as
my data source. As a source and as a charting package, TeleChart had
some advantages. The TC charting had a few, minor advantages over AB.
And, the data had some good features when compared to Quotes Plus – Media
General Industry Group and Sector Indexes, intraday data updates, and clean
data (minimal dead tickers).
However, on the downside, the TC UI had loads of idiosyncrasies
and is not even in the same league with AB for scanning and back testing.
And, as I became more familiar with QP3 data, TC data advantages started to
disappear:
·
While TC intraday data updates are still
an advantage, I can work around it with intraday updates from my broker –
Interactive Brokers.
·
With the new QP plugin, the QP data appears
to be much cleaner; dead tickers are excluded.
·
It turns out that TC’s
implemention of Hemscott’s Media General industry/sector hierarchy doesn’t
work well for me. TC stripped off the Hemscott macroeconomic Sector Level
(8 Sectors) of the hierarchy and uses the bottom two levels of the Hemscott
hierarchy – Business Segment and Industry Group. Unfortunately,
TC refers to the “Business Segment” level as the “Sector”
level. IMO, the 31 TC “Sectors” provide too much granularity
and are not useful as macroeconomic indicators.
Quotes Plus apparently uses the
Reuters Industry and Sector hierarchy which I now find more useful.
·
Now that I’ve gone through the
process of creating my own indexes, I find that it’s an advantage. Using
“AddToComposite” I can create custom indexes that meet my needs and
do not have to depend on the TC definition.
·
While I don’t invest in Mutual
Funds, I do like to use them sometimes as economic indicators. With
TC, they are an added cost item. With Quotes Plus, they come as part of
the standard package.
·
Except for Money Stream and BOP, TC
provides little additional data to AB other than price and volume. Quotes
Plus has a wide variety of fundamental data and “other” data.
For example, it provides market cap data and the percent shares held by institutions
– which I use in my system.
·
My scans run much faster with QP
data. Accessing TC’s data from AB is slower than accessing QP data.
I haven’t quantified how fast the scans run, but scans running against QP
data appear to run 50 to 100% faster.
One final issue with TC is more emotional in nature...
TC is a VERY marketing oriented company. Although TC’s
trainers seem like pretty good folks, asking a basic question to TC management get
a marketing hype response. In some cases, the answers are quite
insulting. At one point, I posted a question on forum about the
Worden Studio product (a web-based product) and how it related to
Telechart. Instead of a clear answer, I got marketing hype.
When I complained that I couldn’t see any value with Worden Studio, they
condescendingly stated that I just didn’t know how to use it!
I’m a Data Warehouse Architect by profession (fancy
name for database developer) and have developed analytical software for 34
years. I don’t claim perfection, but I do understand a
fair amount about analytical systems. For TC management to try to
explain away their products’ deficiencies by telling me that I just don’t
know how to use it is extremely insulting! What’s worse is that it
displays a lack of sensitivity for customer needs and requirements.
OK, flame off!
Because I’m cautious, I’ll keep the TC
subscription for another month or so to ensure that I haven’t missed
anything. From this point forward, Quotes Plus is my primary EOD
data source.
I hope you’ve found this report useful.
Best Regards,
Dan.