- In our opinion, some data providers can sometimes be very slow for purposes of loading historical data during market hours. That is why the DayTrader saves historical data once you close a chart. If you later load that chart during market hours, the saved data will be loaded and not downloaded from your data provider. Any data bars since the chart was closed will be added by downloading from your data provider. If you are loading historical data for the first time and you find it slow, try again after market hours (also see tip 11 below).
- In tip 1, we mentioned that data is reloaded from the disk source when you reload a chart. Here are some additional aspects of this process:
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If you load another chart with the same ticker and same bar size (1 minute, 5 minute, etc.), the data will still be loaded from disk if possible. The data is not saved in the chart.
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Data is saved in the Data folder of the Servers Folder of the NeuroShell Trader folder. Release 3.0 does not erase old data files. If you are no longer interested in a particular ticker, you may want to delete the data file yourself using the Windows Explorer.
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If a new chart requests data older than that saved, the data will have to be entirely downloaded again from your data provider. If not, only the data bars that were created after the data was saved need to be downloaded. All of this is done automatically for you by the DayTrader.
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- Don’t load too much intraday data. You obviously don’t need as many bars of intraday data as you do daily bars to build good models. Usually 2000 to 4000 bars is plenty. If you use too much data, loading will take a long time, as will many other processes in the DayTrader. Remember, the farther back in time you go, the more you risk building models with ancient history that are not relevant today.
- When optimizing, turn on the check mark entitled “Don’t update chart while optimizing/training” if you are connected to the Internet. If the DayTrader keeps talking to the server, it will consume processing cycles that could be utilized by the optimizer.
- Note that disconnecting from the server in the DayTrader does NOT disconnect your Internet connection. You must do that yourself in Windows, or else you may stay connected to your Internet Service Provider. If you have a line that costs by the minute, remaining connected could cost you money. Methods of disconnecting vary with the type of line, type of service, etc. Contact your Internet Service Provider if you don’t know how to do this.
- Tip 5 above is especially true if you are optimizing; you don’t want to remain connected while optimizing. After optimizing starts, you may want to disconnect your Internet connection. After a few seconds, the DayTrader will tell you that you have been disconnected and ask if you want to reconnect. Say no.
- Some data providers may not always correct for stock splits or correct for them immediately (contact your data provider for more info on this). Therefore, if you know there has been a stock split, your models may no longer be as accurate. You may have to wait some number of days to obtain more data at the new price level in order to build another good model.
- There are new options under the Tools menu where you can set the sensitivity of the message that tells you if data has changed and suggests retraining.
- Some indicators (e.g. PCA, or indicators you program in a DLL) may take so long to compute that they may not be appropriate for intraday charts.
- If you do load data during market hours, and the server or the Internet stops sending data, you can cancel loading of that ticker and whatever data was already loaded may still be used.
- If you want to see if sluggish performance of the server during market hours is due to your data provider or your Internet Service Provider, bring up the Internet Explorer and see if you can access web pages never before accessed. If that works quickly, the problem is probably not the Internet Service Provider. Please contact your data provider customer support if you feel their servers are not providing historical data fast enough.
- Don’t load too many tickers into the DayTrader at one time, especially if your models take a long time to process and you are using the portfolio view or alerts. If the portfolio view is displayed or alerts are active, then all the models are “recalculated” with the completion of every new bar, otherwise only the current model is “recalculated” with the completion of every new bar. If you have 1 minute bars, and 20 tickers loaded, then 20 models could be recalculated every minute.
- If you are using eSignal as your Data Server and the ticker that you are looking for is not available please look at Adding New Data Server Ticker Symbols.
- Occasionally, data that is downloaded from a data provider is incorrect, missing or corrupt data. In order to correct these problems you will need to manually delete files that the NeuroShell Trader downloads and stores in the ServersData directory. To do this unload any charts that you believe have incorrect, missing or corrupt data, use the Windows Explorer to delete the ticker file associated with the bad data (for Yahoo – 1 minute data the filename is YHOO.1 min.wsg), then reload the chart (this will redownload the data from the data provider).
