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I have some background in programming, but initially that didn't help me much as I was always looking to translate formulas into "if .. then .. else" structures, while AB is using arrays for getting values and checking conditions. Once you get a hang of this though there's very little you can't do.
The mails from the AB-forum helped a lot; learning from what others wanted to do and seeing how they did it (they are, like futures.io (formerly BMT), a very sharing community). There are some real AB-code-magicians out there, so trying to understand what they were doing, and using relevant things helped a lot to enrich my own formulas - some would call that lurking, I call it sharing the power of knowledge
The help-function coming with AB is also very good (surely compared to the one from NT). Explanations are to the point (and are explanations, no just rewordings raising even more questions), with proper examples, and where needed "enriched" with real code-samples from people using it n their code.
Looking back it took me some time to get the hang of AB, but comparing to NT I would say the elapsed time is similar. AB is more complex than NT so takes longer to learn, however the help for AB is much better so the learning is faster. How fast it went is difficult to tell, and totally depends on how much time you can spend on it. In those days I was commuting to work by train (1 hour each direction) and a lot of that time was invested in AB.
Now to be correct I must state that I didn't know futures.io (formerly BMT) when I started with NT (I know, shame on me) - having access to the Elite part of the site would surely have speeded up my learning curve (as it still does today).
I'm not even a customer of AB yet, the support has been quite responsive. I was not aware that the help function is actually helpful, so that is good to hear, for once (not all serve that function well).
Speaking of futures.io (formerly BMT), this is probably the best 50 bucks I spent in quite some time; and I haven't even scratched the surface of leveraging all that's available for Elite members. Truth be told, I really wish AB had more of a following or presence here as I find this setting more desirable and practical. I'm also heavily considering MC, and the involvement here is so much more. I find this to be a factor at some level, but I don't want it to be...
One of the best industry scanners is Metastock. I have been using it since DOS versions in early 80's until now. The technology is a little old as far as bells and whistle, however, as a scanner there is nothing on market that is better. The language is very simple and intuitive. Actually, AB was originally developed imitating Metastock, although MS programming is the easiest out there. If you know AB, MS is breeze and a joy to write indicators, searches, scans, strategies, systems, expert advisers, etc.
Thank you aligator. I had not researched Metastock, at least during this go-around... Does it also perform back-testing? I'll probably find the answer before you reply, but thought I'd ask. Thanks again for sharing your input.
This is a statement that is built on opinion because you are a MS user but it is not true in the slightest.
This is a quote of Mr. Janeczko of 2009
Just because AB is very flexible and is offering a MS plugin and can handle Metastock data files doesn't mean it's a copy of MS. In fact MS is a dinosaur (IMHO) and development is really slow. On the other side development of AB (in conjunction with including user suggestions) is lightning fast just like the speed of the program itself. Also AB has offered 64-bit version as world's first vendor. Please correct me when did MS offer 64-bit version? Does it even provide one in the meantime? On a side note Multicharts is still cleaning bugs of their 64 bit beta that was introduced 6 years after that date in 2012. Another point and as far as I know MS API has an extra fee whereas AB API (32-bit, 64-bit) to program in C/C++ is offered for free.
I would also like to know and if you could explain in more detail what makes MS scanner better than anything on the market. Please explain maybe by using an example. Thank you!
Amibroker can handle any offline data. It provides connection to real-time vendors like eSignal, IQfeed, CQG and more. It offers connection to Yahoo, Google, MSN free data. It can connect to Metatrader for example (on a side note it can also sent orders to MT4 if you know how). It's providing connection to R. It can handle vendors who offer Metastock format. And so on. I think what you mean is that Interactive brokers is the only by default offered broker connection for discretionary or automated trading.
Welcome to the forum Amiuser and thanks for your input.
As I had said, there has been an increase in data providers for AB, which is great. As far as brokers go, or broker-supplied data, so users don't need to source data from elsewhere (and pay for it), I believe it's just Interactve Brokers. I apologize if wrong. That said, if there must only be one broker relationship, IB would probably be at the top of most people's list. Would be nice if there was a few more though, particularly full-service ones like IB...
If one just wanted EOD data, like from Yahoo! or Google, would AmiQuote be necessary? I get the impression that it would not. If I were to open an account with IB, or if AB were to add a broker for which I'm a client, then I believe AmiQuote would be needed? I appreciate the help / clarification.
Hi TonyB, no you don't particularly need it. There are other tools too that offer downloading EOD data from Yahoo or Google. For example there is a tool called MLDownloader and its data files can be handled by AB very easily e.g via MS data plugin. There are other tools like a free tool called DataDownloader. That tool can even download 1 minute data from Yahoo or Google and in this case as well the downloaded data can be handled quite easily by a script that automatically imports the data into AB. But as far as I know Tomasz wants to include 1-minute data download option into Amiquote in near future too. At least he has shown interest. So let's see. There are some other free or commercial tools that offer EOD download from those two mentioned sources. But as far as comfort is concerned Amiquote or MLDownloader are possibly the best options because you don't need to do much to get your symbols easily downloaded.
Thanks for the clarification. I see that AmiQuote is sold separately, making me think that it is not exactly required; and what you explain makes sense. I just looked at DataDownloader, and that looks really neat.
Do you know if any of these free sources such as Yahoo!, Google or MSN also include broad market data, such as number of NYSE / NASDAQ andvancers / decliners and the number of new highs / lows (NYSE / NASDAQ)? Advance / decline data is used to compute the McClellan Oscillator, which I use on some charts... So I don't have to pester you with such questions, if you know where one can look to see the full extent of the data provided by these sources, please share.
