Using the Tradestation Data Feed

Discussion in 'Data Sets and Feeds' started by FloridaTrader, Nov 20, 2002.

  1. I am interest in moving my account from Terra Nova MB to Tradestation. Just wondering if anybody knows of a program that can use the tradestation data feed to link the real time data to an Excel spreadsheet ? I watch about 100 stocks for band violations and its a pain to type in 100 alerts. With Excel I can cut and paste.

    Thanks FT
     
  2. nitro

    nitro

    I thought I read somewhere that you could tie the TS datafeed to Excel thru DDE ... Let me see if I can find something..

    If not, it would not be too hard to write a .dll that automates Excel and sends the data from TS6 to Excel...

    nitro
     
  3. ...you may be overestimating the difficulty of setting alerts for 100 stocks in TS6. Depending on how you like to use the alerts once you have them, it'd be fairly easy to set up, say, 25 workspaces with 4 charts each, or 12 or 13 with 8 or so each, etc.

    1. Open a chart - setting the data resolution as default. Insert the indicator on one chart. Set the alert. Save as a template.

    2. Load another chart, select the template from the menu at the dialogue box prompt, and un-check "prompt for format."

    Now, whenever, you open a chart, it will default to the template and time frame.

    You would then open 98 more charts in however many workspaces. Alternatively you could set up one workspace as desired, save it under however many different names, and enter the stock in each chart in each appropriate workspace.

    Loading all 12 or however many workspaces would take a couple minutes, depending on computer system, amount of data per chart, and various other factors - longer if you choose to write "signals" (as in a trading system) rather than rely on indicators. If you like to run many additional charts and workspaces, you might want to look into expanding your "desktop heap memory" in order to avoid overtaxing the system.

    Setting this all up shouldn't take very long at all - under half an hour at most, though perhaps longer if you also have to learn the software in the process.

    I think I explained it right - the point is, it's not that hard. In fact, it's one of the things that the software is best-suited to handling, IMO.

    If you need for some reason to have the info outputted to Excel, that can also be done in various ways.

    Hope that helps.
     
  4. KymarFye,

    I'm not to familiar with Tradestation 6. What I'm doing now is having Wealthlab calculate my entries. I then cut and paste the price of the entries into Excel. The Excel spreadsheet gets the quotes from my Terra Nova MB broker. The reason I like Excel is because I can sort the stocks to see how close Percentage wise they are to my entry. Also, if I get a gap up or down I can see which stock is the most over or under my entry percentage wise. I am sure TS6 can't do something like that. I was using alerts with Real Tick and it was a pain in the a$$. :) With Excel I can organize the data and make additional calculations. Maybe I'm wrong and I can do all of this with TS6 but I don't think so.
    Please set me straight if I'm wrong. :)

    FT
     
  5. MrDinky

    MrDinky

    I emailed Tradestation about this a while ago because I also use excel with my datafeed. They told me it can't be done, meaning of course, that it can be done but they choose not to allow this option. I'm not sure the rationale they have about protecting their data but it's a big enough issue in my trading to decide against opening an account with them.

    This was a while ago, three or four months. Perhaps they've had a change of heart since then.

    :cool:
     
  6. Florida,

    Well this latest sounds a lot different from the alerts stuff earlier. I don't know what is or isn't possible and/or practical in real time with Excel and TS6. I do know that it's possible to export just about any info you want (including OHLC), but I've never looked into mastering that process beyond opening a bunch of charts once a day to create a "scan" file. Though I know you can certainly have TS calculate virtual entries, like WL does, and export them, setting up DDE is beyond my experience.
     
  7. I am not sure whether I understood you correctly, but you know that you can do a similar thing with the Alert manager in Wealth-Lab if you have a real time feed? You can have an automatic sort that will always have the symbol that is nearest to you entry at top.

    Volker