Replies to post #7802 on MDA - Market Direction Analysis (MDA)

[augieboo]

Hi Tom,

Sounds like an interesting project. (:

But I don't want to be burdened with entering these manually every day OR paying a wad for data feeds. Do you know of an inexpensive but easy solution?

Depends on your definition of "inexpensive."

Here are some possibilities:

[1] I think that there is a way to download individual data points, e.g., the closing price of a single index, into a single cell of Excel, but I don't know how it's done.

[2] I'm also pretty sure that there are Excel add-ons you can buy which would do this, but I don't know their names, nor whether they are easy to use.

[3] Larry Dudash uses a data-feed/system which is relatively inexpensive, i.e., less than $100 per month, and which allows him to update a spreadsheet with a single click. I don't remember what system/provider it is, but he could tell you.


Second problem, I'm not a math wizard or software programmer and I'm a novice in Excel.

Welcome to the Ignorant Non-Geek Club -- which is composed of those of us who were too dumb to major in something useful in college yet are just smart enough to have figured out -- now that it's too late -- that we messed up by not doing so. {g/ng}


I assume my system could be developed just using Excel (?)

Yep. No problem. A little time consuming to set up, but actually quite easy to do.


Do I need to take a class in Excel...?

Heck no, I figured it out and I was a poli-sci major for garsh sakes! {g/ng}

Take a look, in the iBox on #board-1752, at "[3] Rate of Change (unsmoothed)"

If you can manage that, then you're on your way.

(:

[hiker]

Tom, here's how I used to do (generically) some of what you are talking about (i.e., downloading a lot of closing figures or aother data at one time)

- Form a list of equities you're interested in on Yahoo & save it as a book mark.

Example:http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=csco+msft+amat+txn&d=v1

- Click on "save to spreadsheet" (at lower right).
- Click on File - save as - choose quotes.csv and txt file
- Link a column on your main spreadsheet to the quotes.csv file
- Copy that column in the main spreadsheet, then save as values-only elsewhere
- Repeat the same the next day

This is really not as complicated as it looks here in print. All you are really doing each day is saving the days numbers to the csv file, then cut-and-pasting once in your main excel file.

Hope this is clear enough to be useful.

[augieboo]

I FOUND IT!

Check these links:

http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/excel/webquery/samples.htm

http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/9798/webcnkit.aspx

[doniam]

This sounds like a worthwhile project. Just wish it was for the Rydex sector funds as that is where my account is,

[hiker]

You may also be interested in checking out this guys analysis:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChasRichards/files/rydex.htm

He already seems to be doing something along the lines of what you propose, but for Rydex funds as a whole.

[augieboo]

Tom, I was just playing around with Excel re your idea and I have a couple more questions. You said:

The ROC for each period would need to be divided by the number of days in the period (this is so longer periods don't dominate the composite).

It seems that doing this will bias the entire index very heavily toward the short side, since, for example, only the 60 period sub-index will only have 1/12th of the weight of the 5 period sub-index.

Is this what you are aiming for?

Is this how NDR does it?

TIA,