Technical Analysis of Stock Data with Excel Visual Basic
If you presently do any type of programming (e.g., scan writing) to evaluate securities or trading strategies, you might consider doing such programming in a platform that gives you total control and is almost certain to have continued support with future versions providing full backward compatibility to earlier versions. I am not aware of any technical analysis platform that provides either the flexibility or the likelihood of continued support that Microsoft Excel Visual Basic does.
Stock data or software vendors can be here today and gone tomorrow or can undergo changes sufficient to warrant termination of the use of their products. Consequently, one should be careful about making any significant investment of method development, time, or emotion in a particular vendor's product. Such investment could hold one in bondage to a vendor when any objective outside observer could plainly see it's time to cut one's losses and leave. With Excel Visual Basic as a platform for technical analysis, you will not be held hostage to any stock data or software vendor's proprietary, peculiar, unpredictable, or cryptic scan language or data format.
The Excel 97 workbook GM.xls is an output file from an Excel Visual Basic program and conveys some idea of what Excel Visual Basic can do in the way of technical analysis. If you agree with the "Terms of Use" below, examine GM.xls by downloading the corresponding self-extracting file (GM.exe, 638 KB). GM was selected arbitrarily to demonstrate calculation of the most common technical indicators as well as charting of Bollinger bands and trades based on parabolic stop and reverse. Double-click on the downloaded GM.exe from Windows Explorer and then open GM.xls with Excel 97. When you open it, you might be prompted with a dialog box warning that the workbook contains macros which could be virus infested. Click "Enable Macros" to continue. If you are running good anti virus software, you might want to select the option of not having this warning repeated. After you have opened GM.xls, read the "Read Me" worksheet for further instructions and information.
The Excel Visual Basic program in Excel 97 workbook TA.xls:
Identifies stocks satisfying specified technical indicator criteria and
Tabulates and charts indicator values and prices over a specified time period for specified individual stocks.
The Visual Basic Code in TA.xls is completely read and write accessible. If you agree with the "Terms of Use" below, get TA.xls by downloading the corresponding self-extracting file (TA.exe, 704 KB). Don't open TA.xls without following the instructions provided in TA.doc (a Word 97 file) or TA.htm (the corresponding html translation readable by web browsers), both of which are also included in the self-extracting file TA.exe. Just double-click on the downloaded TA.exe from Windows Explorer to unzip these three files, which will be placed in a subdirectory folder "Programs" automatically created in a directory folder "Visual Basic for TA" automatically created in the same folder from which TA.exe underwent self-extraction. (If these directory folders and files already exist, you will be prompted from an MS-DOS window for permission to overwrite the files.)
TA.xls Versions and Bugs
Stock Data Providers. I believe Quotes Plus beats all others, hands down, with the possible exception of TC2000. TA.xls uses the DLL's that Quotes Plus provides for lightning-fast retrieval of data from its database. To varying degrees, the other end-of-day stock data "providers" fail to comprehend the self-evident standards for this service.
I can be reached by e-mail at jfritch@earthlink.net. I also participate in the Quotes-Plus e-mail discussion thread at http://www.onelist.com/.
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All contents of this web site and all materials provided therefrom, including but not limited to the Excel workbooks and programming code therein, are copyright ⌐ 1998-1999 John R. Fritch, 4334 Five Points Road, Corpus Christi, TX 78410, or by other author expressly specified in a different copyright notice. All rights reserved.
