Hello, Has anyone had sucess with importing basic CSV data: Date, TIME, O,H,L,C,V data into TradeLink? The software seems like a nice tool, but, I cannot seem to accomplish something as simple as importing basic CSV data, the tick converter tool fails everytime no matter the format I try... It has options for Yahoo data... Google data. None of them seem to work at all! Note I'm just trying to do some basic testing here and something as simple as providing data would be a no brainer, right??? So far after days of trying to figure this out and getting no info after searching the user group, I'm posting here in hopes of making some progress. Thanks, Mike
I remember with great pain hiring the Tradelink guy to do some automated stuff for myself. I also remember that according to his tutorials and from speaking to him, that his tick converter app could easily convert Esignal data to be used in Tradelink. It didn't work then 2 yrs ago. Sad to see that your having a rough go of it. I have tried many times to get my money back from him, but he doesn't even respond to my e-mails anymore.
I used TradeLink to convert some data. I'm pretty sure TradeLink assumes that the data you want is formatted a specific way and is not smart enough to deduce what each column in your CSV is. One way to get around the issue would be, for example, to rearrange your CSV columns to be the same as CQG (or esignal, or whatever) and load it in that way, or use some other format. Alternatively, you can just pattern your own converter based on the other ones that exist within the TikConverter program; however, this requires that you have some programming skill. All the TikConverter does is read the "CSV"-type file, parse it, and convert it into the .TIK format. The tik converter has a bunch of hackish code implementations that pick out the data from the various formats, based on the column layouts of those formats. I've been using TradeLink for a few months now. It's very unpolished software relative to its competition, but it's "stable" enough that if you know how to code, you can tweak it to your needs. Whatever you intend to do with it, you should become intimately familiar with the code to the point where you understand most of the code paths your particular strategy will be executing.
Rock & Clearing, Thanks for the feedback. I've tried the other formats and none of them work... looking at the TikConverter code, it does appear straightforward, but, I don't want to recompile the entire project to get something as simple as this working... I am defintely not a skilled programmer, but, I have written my own backtesting & trading software in VB and done quite bit of work with the Sterling and IB APIs (all in VB). This is really frustrating as I'm not well versed in C# and want to do something *really simple*. Frankly, while I know that the tool is likely stable and has great features, the inability to perform simple data import for testing is really off-putting. I'm a little suprised that a simple feature like this has been broken for > 2years when the fix sounds simple?? That's actually kind of shocking. FWIW, I can write code that parses an OHLC file and does a basic backtest using VB in like 2 minutes ?!? (and I'm an amatuer at best). C'mon tradelink developer(s), this is a bit much....
Mike tik converter is used every day to import variety of formats. Not sure what you are specifically having trouble with because there have been no posts on the users list asking questions about tik converter. You can post a question on the users list by going to http://tradelink.googlecode.com Click on trade link users. Then click on new post. Someone will help you resolve what problem you are having. We also welcome your feedback for making things easier to use.
Thanks, Really appreciate the response, I know how much work it is to keep up with all the demands. All I want to do is import a CSV using either the TradeStation format or the Multicharts format (well, any format that works really). I can make the CSV files with any values. Just let me know what I have to do to the CSV and what I have to do in TikConverter. Currently I have: DD/MM/YYYY,HH:MM:SS,LAST,VOLUME That's it... nothing special. I've tried D,T,O,H,L,C,V, the TradeStation basic "save data"... For the life of me every format I try doesn't work. It keeps saying "Object reference file error" and it wants to send a bug report (which I did several days ago). Thanks, Mike
Mike, You can post a question on the users list by going to http://tradelink.googlecode.com Click on trade link users. Then click on new post. Someone will help you resolve what problem you are having.
Regarding need to be familiar with tradelink source code, there is no requirement for this. We actually recommend most people not download the source code just because it's rarely necessary to modify it (unless you want to add a feature). Clearinghouse seems like a more experienced developer. The vast majority of the users and commercial clients use the off-the-shelf product.