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On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Malcolm Smith wrote:
> Hi!
Howdy.
> I am not sure about the source for free quotes on the 'net as I don't
Yahoo is one source for stock quotes.
> deal with Emerging Markets, just the UK one so I have no idea about free
> NYSE quotes. I understand that quotes are cheap/free in the US but I
> would pass on a word of warning based on my experiences here in the UK.
> That is to be beware of cheap quote services; I have found them to be
> dreadful; but things may be better on the left side of the pond.
The accuracy is easily tested. Some time ago I proposed a test (well,
comparison) of historical data from several quote vendors. I would
include the free data as well.
> I wouldn't bother going via Excel; this seems to be a torturous route
> with little to show for it. I would recommend that you write (or get
Someone proposed using web retrieval directly into Excel 97, a search on
dejanews would probably turn up the article, I believe in comp.spreadsheets.
> someone to do it for you) a Perl script to get the data in the right
> shape and to check that the High is higher than the Low and that sort of
> thing. Then import the ASCII data from the Perl script (which will run
> in seconds) into Downloader.
Yes, this would be much faster than the Excel approach.
>
> One tip: when importing data into Downloader, make sure that it is
> sorted otherwise Downloader takes an age to open the correct folders and
> things. I have found that it's not the number of records that is the
> factor that takes the time, but the number of different stocks in the
> import file - an unsorted import file counts each record as one stock -
> a five day sorted import file takes a fifth of the time.
By sort, do you mean a grouping of tickers by date, or a grouping of
dates by ticker? Also, do you know offhand of performance difference on
direction of date order (oldest - newest vs. newest - oldest)?
Cheers,
Jim
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