How to setup end of day trading software database

Using end of day trading software is not rocket science. If you have good or best stock market software for your needs then its usage could provide valuable results for your trading or active investing.

I prefer to use AmiBroker – my every day software for stock chart analysis. This program allows me to do regular stock market technical analysis. I analyze different markets and their indexes. I also analyze different sectors and individual stocks. I also use this software for analysis of commodities and currencies.

What data source for free stock charts?

One of the best features of AmiBroker is that it can use free historical data available on the Internet to feed its own database. And then use these data to create free charts. It is possible to use these data every day and not pay any subscription fee to any stock quotes provider. But it also means that there are also some limits. These every-day quotes are delayed. They are not real-time. But it is no problem for end of day trading software chart analysis.

Free price quotes and historical data are available on Yahoo finance or on Google finance. It is also possible to go to these sites directly to use their free stock charts. But the solution when data are downloaded to a free end of day trading software database is much better. Why? AmiBroker is a much more powerful program and every day usage of this software for trading and analysis is a much better choice.

How to create free stock charts database in Amibroker

The first step is to go to the AmiBroker menu and select File – New – Database option. Then the window is shown as you can see below.

Using Browse you have to choose some folder in your computer where your database will be stored. Create this folder in advance. Select this folder and then click the Create button. Your new database is created.

Then it is necessary to define that it will be an end of day local database. Here is what should be set:

And the database is prepared. What is needed is to add symbols into the database. There is an option in the menu: Symbol – New. The small window is presented where you can put tickers (symbols) comma separated. Like in the example below:

^GSPC is the Yahoo symbol for the S&P500 stock market index and ^IXIC for the Nasdaq Composite stock market index. Do not forget sometimes to click to File – Save, although AmiBroker will do it automatically.

How to download data about stock trading?

It is very simple to fill data to your end of day trading software database. Go to the menu and click to Tools – Auto-update quotes (AmiQuote only). It will run a special tool called AmiQuote that will download historical data.

For first download please select for “From” date some historical date like 1.1.1980 to have a really long history of quotes. You can see a similar choice again on the example.

Click the green arrow and wait for the download to end. You can see the situation after download on this picture.

Now you have data about your tickers/symbols in your database and you can analyze their charts. Click back to AmiBroker to check them. Here is an example of a chart I have set after data download.