--- In 
amibroker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Paul Ho" <paultsho@xxx> wrote:
>
> One problem for yahoo data for Australian stocks is that price is 
only
> quoted down to 2 decimal place only. In real life, 3 decimal place 
is quoted
> at the exchange.
> 
> 
>   _____  
> 
> From: 
amibroker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
amibroker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
On Behalf
> Of brian_z111
> Sent: Friday, 15 February 2008 11:38 PM
> To: 
amibroker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [amibroker] Re: New EOD data feed other than Quotes Plus
> 
> 
> 
> Ara,
> 
> For the sake of sharing information - to save people wasted time:
> 
> > I know many are willing to to do a lot of work in order to use 
free 
> >data from Yahoo or add fundamenttal info from Yahoo.
> 
> It's no work at all.
> Yahoo and Yahoo current fundamentals are integrated with AmiQuote > 
AB
> 
> >>I have not tried it, but my impression has been that what you get 
> >>is what you pay for. 
> 
> Yahoo data is not free - it is paid for by Yahoo (bought from 
> reputable companies) from revenue from ads - it is distributed for 
> free to attract users to the site who then buy things via the ads 
(I 
> sometimes do).
> 
> >I would rather pay a reasonable fee and get a reliable product.
> 
> How do we know that our data products are quality? - because the 
> provider told us so?
> 
> How can we check data and how many do?
> It is not so easy to check data.
> 
> As I suggested to Barry the other day - we can go to Yahoo, 
download 
> raw, or fully adjusted, get dividend info, get split info and do 
our 
> own checks on Yahoo in the same way we can do that for any other 
> provider. I have done one or two here and there and I haven't found 
> anything alarming to me. If I did I would then work around that.
> 
> What we can't get from Yahoo is event adjusted data without 
dividend 
> adjustment - people who want that have to get it elsewhere.
> 
> Also, sadly, for longer term traders, more error is introduced into 
> backtesting by using data without div adjustment than errors within 
> Yahoo's data (I only say that to help people).
> 
> IMO - first we should know what our trading style is, second we 
> should have a strategy in mind and then third we should buy data 
that 
> will give us the best chance to analyze past performance of that 
> strategy (in my case that means a few different types of data).
> 
> As you know I could give a couple of pages more in support of 
traders 
> taking a more flexible and proactive attitude to their data but I 
> would be better to do that at the UKB.
> 
> One example:
> 
> I recently developed a very promising new system on holiday - just 
> before walking out the door to catch the plane I copied a complete 
AB 
> directory from an XP machine and dumped it on a Vista laptop 
> (naughty, naughty) - I dumped all the old databases to get the size 
> down and only took a copy of Jim's US Yahoo database (I wanted div 
> adjusted data for EOD backtesting).
> 
> I managed to get some good work done.
> 
> When I got back I then carried on towards testing in intraday data 
> from another provider and so far it is performing exactly as tested 
> on Yahoo (only better) - I am using intraday to finesse the entries 
> and exits that I couldn't finesse in EOD data. The trades average 2-
3 
> days round trip.
> 
> Also when it is ready to trade I will be totally familiar with it 
> after thousands of tests etc and I will see straight away if 
> something is odd when I start going to the brokers (who also has a 
> different source for data).
> 
> Also consider that the so-called differences in data is a bit of a 
> myth. In Australia there is only one exchange - they have a 
monopoly 
> on the data. They do some filtering of the tick data themselves 
> before releasing it to their providers so how different can it be.
> 
> The only differences in data in Australia that can occur are from 
a) 
> extra filtering or b) event adjustments.
> 
> At the prices I don't think too many here are doing to mucn of a) 
and 
> b) is checkable.
> 
> Also, as we have seen in a recent article, bad tick data isn't the 
> end of the world at the EOD level.
> 
> In fact EOD traders can tolerate quite a bit of error and still win 
> the day.
> 
> brian_z
>