Rajandran R Telecom Engineer turned Full-time Derivative Trader. Mostly Trading Nifty, Banknifty, USDINR and High Liquid Stock Derivatives. Trading the Markets Since 2006 onwards. Using Market Profile and Orderflow for more than a decade. Designed and published 100+ open source trading systems on various trading tools. Strongly believe that market understanding and robust trading frameworks are the key to the trading success. Writing about Markets, Trading System Design, Market Sentiment, Trading Softwares & Trading Nuances since 2007 onwards. Author of Marketcalls.in)

How to Get Institutional Grade End of the Day data for Amibroker

2 min read

Refinitiv – DataLink that’s the key to the answer if you are looking for Institutional Grade End of the Day data which provides reliable and robust data feed to Traders/Investors.

Why Institutional Quality Datafeed?
You might wonder when there are lots of free EOD data downloaders available out right there what difference Institutional Quality Datafeed provides and how it matters? Why one need to pay for EOD data anyways?

Most of the individual investors/traders in the market who use low-quality data and risk trading on bad signals or bad backtesting outcome. The reliability of such low-quality feed is very less and prone to errors and can’t take it for serious trading or serious investing.

When comes to EOD Datafeed, data need to back adjusted to the stock split, bonus & other corporate action. Datafeed should adjust your historical EOD data intelligently, resulting in smooth price charts and accurate analytics.

Why Refinitiv DataLink?

Refinitiv Datalink is compatible with a number of leading software packages like Amibroker, Metastock, Ninjatrader..etc, and DataLink doesn’t lock you into a particular software.

Refinitiv DataLink (RDL) covers nearly every equity exchange in North America and most in Europe and Asia. This coverage also includes all North American, European, and Asian futures and commodities, Forex, and even all international indices– close to 3000 indices on all world markets! All historical data for the plan you sign up for is included.

Refinitiv DataLink doesn’t require downloading software when used with MetaStock. Simply type in the symbol you want to analyze and the data is instantly accessible. This feature, called DataOnDemand.

DataLink Downloader

DataLink downloader lets you collect on an unlimited number of instruments, exposing large amounts of data for system testing and explorations, charting and analysis.

Datadownloader v17 comes with two data formats

1)Legacy – This is an older data format still used by several third-party applications(Amibroker, Ninjatrader,etc) and data suppliers.
2)MS Local – This is the new data format the new Downloader saves the data in.

Datalink downloader – downloads the data and stores in Metastock database format and hence the software like Amibroker supporting MetaStock database using inbuilt MetaStock plugin.

How to Create Metastock Database using Datalink Downloader

  1. Open DownLoader
  2. Select the Download tab in the DownLoader Console
  3. Click the Add button
  4. Select a folder in which to create your Legacy local data files (E.g. Under your Documents folder, select the MetaStock folder)
  5. If you wish to create a new sub-folder to help organize your data, click the New folder button and name it accordingly (e.g. Stocks)
  6. Click the Select Folder button
  7. Right click on the newly created folder
  8. Select Create new security…
  9. Select Legacy
  10. Click OK
  11. Type in an instrument into the Symbol field
  12. If you need help finding the instrument, click the Look-up button
  13. If you wish to create a large number at once, select the Multiple Selections option, then click Look-Up
  14. Double click the folder, or click the arrow on the left side of the folder name, to expand the list (e.g. Index Constituents)
  15. Select the box next the folder or individual ticker that you wish to add
  16. Click Select
  17. Enter a Name (If you used the Look-up the name will be filled in automatically. If you leave the field blank, the symbol will be used as the name.)
  18. Set the desired Interval
  19. Supported intervals are Daily, Weekly, and Monthly (Intraday intervals are not currently supported).
  20. Set the First date field to the desired date where you want to collecting data.
  21. Default is five years. If you change this, the application will remember your change
  22. Change the Units, if necessary.
  23. Click OK. If you need to create more, click Create in the above step and the repeat and click OK on the last one

How to Connect Metastock Database with Amibroker

1)Run AmiBroker
2)Choose File->New database
3)Type a new folder name (for example: C:\Program Files\AmiBroker\NSE EOD ) and click Create and select Metastock Plugin from datasource as shown in the picture below:

Metastock plugin in Amibroker is quite fast, as it can retrieve 1000 bars in about 6-7 milliseconds (including looking up for symbol in 5 different directories). In fact, AmiBroker can access Metastock data faster than Metastock itself. 

4) Click on Configure button to show plugin configuration dialog
5) Click on the “Add folder” button to add Metastock database directory as your data source (browse for Metastock MASTER file and click OK) as shown below:
6)Press Retrieve Symbols and Press Ok button

7)Bingo, Now you should be able to access the charts with large historical data with Institutional grade.

Rajandran R Telecom Engineer turned Full-time Derivative Trader. Mostly Trading Nifty, Banknifty, USDINR and High Liquid Stock Derivatives. Trading the Markets Since 2006 onwards. Using Market Profile and Orderflow for more than a decade. Designed and published 100+ open source trading systems on various trading tools. Strongly believe that market understanding and robust trading frameworks are the key to the trading success. Writing about Markets, Trading System Design, Market Sentiment, Trading Softwares & Trading Nuances since 2007 onwards. Author of Marketcalls.in)

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8 Replies to “How to Get Institutional Grade End of the Day…”

  1. Dear Rajendran

    This sounds to be pretty interesting read. However i request you define the institutional grade data. what are the key differences and how the end user gains edge over others?

    Regards
    Lokesh

    1. If you want to build a reliable timing model and to test portfolio allocation first key requirement is a reliable database that is clean and adjusted to split, bonus, right issues and other corporate actions.

      Such a clean database is necessary for Building reliable timing models and so that we can confidently go and scale the investing models. Rather sitting with unreliable database and working with halfbacked database might end up with poor & skewed results.

      1. That’s nice, but I think that as for today standards, an -institutional grade quality data- needs at least to have 5 min intraday continuous compressed data even if it is not realtime, with after and pre market issues included. Lot’s of today risk metrics are based on volatility models that compound returns on intraday issues. It’s a shame that Refinitiv still does not offer an affordable OnDemand data (no realtime) with intraday compressions. Only international competition I know that still offers it is eSignal’s onDemand.

  2. Very Interesting.. Thank you sir for this. Just wanted to ask do u think any other cheaper data source will equally be better? seems Viratech provide this data at a much cheaper rate..
    Best Regards,
    Nitin

    1. Data from Finosys, Trend7, Viratech are the cheaper alternative with reasonable pricing.
      If you are using free Downloaders then ensure that you are doing all the corporate action adjustments(Split,Bonus, Right issue, Merger, Demerger, company name change) manually

  3. FIRST OF ALL THANKS , I HAVE TRIED TO PURCHASE THEIR MONTHLY ASIA PACK THROUGH MY SBI DEBIT CARD BUT FAILED, MY DEBIT CARD ALREADY ACTIVATED FOR INTERNATIONAL USAGE BUT NO RESULT, PLEASE GUIDE ME SIR ANYTHING I AM DOING WRONG DURING ONLINE PAYMENT

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