Re: [EquisMetaStock Group] Re: Lengthy Download, MetaStock Email Archive

Richard,

I use Amibroker as well as Metastock. For speed, would you recommend downloading it in AB format and then converting it to MS format? Do you offer that capability?

Thanks.

From: Richard Dale <richard@xxxxxxxxxxx.net>
To: equismetastock@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, December 16, 2009 3:58:47 AM
Subject: Re: [EquisMetaStock Group] Re: Lengthy Download

Hi Super,

It really depends upon your PC's configuration and the amount of corporate actions that occur on the day. But the report I provided below is typical.

Why not give it a go here:
http://www.premiumd ata.net/products /premiumdata/ freetrial. php
and see the performance for yourself.

If you don't achieve around 10 minutes per day worth of update, read our FAQs or contact us via our support email address and we'll see why your PC isn't performing as expected. In general, if virus scanning is disabled on the data folder and the drive is reasonably defragmented and not running close to being full, the updates should progress fairly quickly.

That being said, the MetaStock data format is terribly ineffecient. There is a massive operating system overhead in the one-file-per- stock method used by MetaStock. We are in the process of moving to a database-oriented format on the client. Daily updates take around 10-15 seconds for every day for all US securities. Yes, I'm serious! It's so quick I had to check to see whether it had actually done anything. Initally we'll be developing access to it via a data plugin for AmiBroker. Unfortunately MetaStock doesn't support data plugins so we have to maintain the old MetaStock file format - but we have been working on ways to improve the update time for multiple day updates for MetaStock so that will be forthcoming too.

Best regards,
Richard Dale.
Norgate Investor Services
- Premium quality Stock, Futures and Foreign Exchange Data for
  markets in Australia, Asia, Canada, Europe, UK & USA -
www.premiumdata. net

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [EquisMetaStock Group] Re: Lengthy Download
From: superfragalist <no_reply@xxxxxxxxxx s.com>
To: equismetastock@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:49:52 -0000

Okay, Richard, if you can guarantee the 10 minute time for the download and the collection report on 12,000 US stock symbols, I'll sign up after the first of the year. I'll buy the historical data back to 1950 and the delisted symbols as well.

Super

--- In equismetastock@ yahoogroups. com, Richard Dale <richard@xxx > wrote:
>
> Perhaps consider a different data vendor.
>
> One of my PCs for updating data on AMEX, NASDAQ, NYSE, OTC and US
> Indices takes around 10 minutes. If I take out the OTC securities so we
> perform an apples-for-apples comparison against Reuters it's more like 8
> minutes. I bet if I defragmented my drive it would also reduce it
> significantly too.
>
> This is on a 2 year old PC (dual core AMD with 4GB RAM on Windows 7 64
> bit edition on a 7200RPM WD Caviar Black hard drive).
>
> The history on this goes back 59 years so it does take a bit longer to
> read and write those files too.
>
> Best regards,
> Richard Dale.
> Norgate Investor Services
> - Premium quality Stock, Futures and Foreign Exchange Data for
> markets in Australia, Asia, Canada, Europe, UK& USA -
> www.premiumdata. net
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [EquisMetaStock Group] Re: Lengthy Download
> From: superfragalist <no_reply@xxxxxxxxxx s.com>
> To: equismetastock@ yahoogroups. com
> Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:38:20 -0000
> >
> > I download around 12,000 symbols a night. The time it takes varies.
> > Reuters servers can get very busy. The best time to download is
> > between 10:00 pm and 11:00 pm eastern time.
> >
> > Sometimes it takes 45 minutes, sometimes it takes 2 hours, and every
> > once in awhile I have to redo the whole download because the servers
> > were flakie.
> >
> > The collection report has to append the data onto each file and then
> > save the file so you've got 12,000 file overwrites alone. Have you
> > tried to overwrite 12,000 files with 12,000 new files? I have and it
> > ain't fast.
> >
> > If your history only goes back say 4 years, it takes less time. Mine
> > is 20 years so I get no joy on that issue.
> >
> > If you ran MS on a solid state drive like an Intel X25-E Extreme SATA,
> > it will go faster. (Not all solid state drives are equally as good or
> > as fast!) In fact, your laptop will be smoking fast on hd read/writes,
> > and the battery life will jump up.
> >
> > On my desktop I can do other work while the download runs in the
> > background. I usually don't because I run the downloads when I'm
> > normally busy with other stuff.
> >
> > Sorry there isn't a really good solution, cheap, easy solution.
> >
> > Super
> >
> > --- In equismetastock@ yahoogroups. com
> > <mailto:equismetast ock%40yahoogroup s.com>, "rickbw" <rickbw@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Currently my laptop is taking 2+ hours to download my daily price
> > updates. The number of symbols is around 10,000 and what seems to be
> > taking the most time is the portion of the update called "Building
> > Collection Report" (last part of the process). I have attempted to
> > turn off Norton Antivirus to see if that was slowing the process and
> > it does not seem to have any effect.
> > >
> > > My system follwos:
> > >
> > > Windows Vista
> > > Intel Core 2 Solo Processor (1.4 GHz, 800 MHZ)
> > > 4GB Memory
> > > 250 GB HDD with about 120 GB free.
> > >
> > > Should it take this long? Any ideas if it shouldn't on how I can
> > improve the time? It is frustrateing waiting this long each evening :(
> > >
> > > Rick
> > >
> >
> >
>