can anyone give me pointers on where i can find some of this stuff, and cost of it? i'm not specifically looking for backtesting, but a sort of manual backtesting - finding stocks and scenarios that happened 20-30 years ago, and seeing how they played out. the intraday stuff is more important to me than the daily charts. must be able to be viewed in candlestick format. thanks for any help or leads.
www.prophet.net has historical daily data on their java charts. Open java charts, click the drop down box on the amount of data shown and click "all" and their entire data base on that stock will load. Then click for daily charts. The old established stocks have history going back to 1968. The Dow goes back to 1901. Best of all, it's free.
how do you plan to take into account the huge decrease in commisions, increase in volume, and just about everything else. I would be curious to know how people even use data from more than 5 years ago for the same reasons.
thanks option_trader. i took a look at prophet, and will contact them regarding the intraday part of it. they definitely have the daily charts of the older stocks - though that part isn't free. i don't care about paying for the data, as long as it's what i need. thanks for the lead. rosy - boosh is right. i've seen charts of stocks in the 20s, 30s, and 40s which exhibit similar patterns to those in the 50s, 60s, 90s and 00s. but i'm not looking for specific stocks to prove a thesis for a book - rather, to look at a wide group of stocks that i can compare for similar future action now. and by using something "so" long ago, it's a different environment than the trading markets i've been a part of - namely, since mid 90s. since i'm NOT trading certain then-unknown-technical things whose value has diminished since 'everyone' knows about them, i want to see if patterns X, Y and Z, which i've observed over time, work in a timeframe i'm mainly unfamiliar with.
any other suggestions besides prophet? i emailed them about it, received the automated "we'll get back to you shortly about it", got nothing from them over the next week, emailed again with the original message and a "hi, haven't heard from you, please let me know" and no response. so, i'm guessing that they don't have what i need now, and by the lack of response, don't want any future business i might give them. any other places i can search for? thanks in advance...
ok, i finally got a response. it didn't answer my question, so i used their live chat... and found out that they definitely have "monthly" data back to 1968, and possibly daily data, but not intraday. oh well, the search continues...