# Testing a system using Quotetracker



## insearchofalpha (30 November 2009)

Hi everyone.
Long time listener, first time caller - or something like that.
I'm looking to test (ie: paper trade) a system I'm developing that will provide alerts when a price retreats a certain percentage.
The percentage will be between my entry price and the high.
I only want to be alerted if:
(1) the high is above my breakeven point
(2) if the percentage retracement (I'll specify the percentage) from the high also is above my breakeven point

I want to try this because a number of stocks I have identified for entry have shot up quite high intraday and have since pulled back.  They haven't retraced these highs.  I figure this is symptomatic of the non trending market we are in (ASX).  I suspect that if the market was trending I could use a trailing chandelier stop and ride the stock up.  That approach doesn't seem to be working too well in my trade testing over the past few weeks.

My thoughts are to use quotetracker and have it connected to a live feed from - say Commsec.  Reading quotetracker's site there's a suggestion that commsec is slow?  Is this still the case? Can anyone using quotetracker advise?

What I'd like to do is write some code that would poll quotetracker's internal webserver to check prices of stocks in my watchlist and then if certain conditions are trigged my code will let me know.

Is anyone doing something like this and can comment?
Thanks.


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## Wysiwyg (30 November 2009)

*Re: Quotetracker - who uses it?*

I did not comprehend your entire post but will display the alerts function in Quote Tracker. I have set up an alert for CBA  of any movement greater than 5%. From the 'alerts' drop-down, click 'edit alerts' and then add the criterion to create an alert.
 You will need to have the stock listed in your portfolio and have a feed from one of the many available "quote sources". You need an account with most of the quote sources I think. Like anything new it will take some time to become familiar with the functions so use the Help Menu.


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## insearchofalpha (30 November 2009)

*Re: Quotetracker - who uses it?*

Thanks Wysiwyg.
I've looked at the alerts available in quotetracker that are shows in the information on their website.  It doesn't seem to do what I want.
I'll try and step through a scenario so hopefully it will make sense.

Let's say I had identified CBA as a target stock and would enter when the price was just higher than yesterday's close ($50.60).  So entry at minimum of $50.61.  I would buy 500 shares.Assuming 2x brokerage at $15 ($30) my breakeven point is then $50.91.
Now CBA opened today at $51.74.  If I got in at that price and still purchased 500 shares my breakeven price would be $52.04.
CBA's price rose above breakeven so a few ticks past breakeven I would have set a stop loss at breakeven.  The high today was $52.95.  Lets just suppose that the intraday high was actually $79.00 but the stock dropped back to close at today's actual closing price of $52.80.
If my system was to alert me when the stock dropped back 10% of it's gain from the high (compared to my entry price) I would be working with the following figures:
high - $79.00
entry - $51.71
dollar gain from entry to high - $27.29
alert at high minus 10% of dollar gain ($2.729) - $76.271.

The idea here being to not give up too much of a price spike.  I think quotetracker only lets you specify alerts at particular pricepoints rather than having a dynamic rule that will do what I have proposed above.  Is that right?

Apparently quotetracker has it's own internal webserver that you can turn in somewhere in the options. you can query this webserver for pricing information.  I figure I could write some code to take care of the above rule and have it source it's date from the quotetracker software's own internal webserver on my machine.

The question of about Commsec was around the timeliness of data getting intot he quotetracker program.  The quotetracker website says it's slow.  Has anyone tried quotetracker with a number of different datasources and seen a large differerence between them (ie: lag)?

I hope I've been able to better articulate what I'm trying to do here.


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## Wysiwyg (30 November 2009)

*Re: Quotetracker - who uses it?*



insearchofalpha said:


> *The idea here being to not give up too much of a price spike.*
> I hope I've been able to better articulate what I'm trying to do here.




1) If you are on your computer, then an alert of the said stock rising could be watched live. 

2) If you are not on your computer then I suggest a mobile internet connection so when the stock rises above a pre-set price you will also be alerted and could eyeball the price. 


> CommSec clients with iPhones can login anywhere, keep up to date with market news and prices, research companies and their performance, monitor their stock portfolio, and buy and sell shares.


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## insearchofalpha (30 November 2009)

Thanks again.
My computer may be at home running this process while I'm at work so an alert via IM or email might be something I set up to get my attention while at work.  I may or may not be able to run this on a computer at work - not sure about this yet but I'll look into it.
I unfortunately don't have the time during market hours to watch things too much so that's why I'm investigating the possibility of some quite specific alerts.  I'm quite happy to let the stock continue to rise and not be alerted if it rises and doesn't retrace more than 10% of my dollar gain from entry.

This is just one specific type of alert obviously but I'll no doubt come up with some more ideas.  I'll look at prototyping this by pulling (delayed) data from the yahoo website and if it works then move to pulling the data from quotetracker's local webserver.


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## Wysiwyg (30 November 2009)

> What I'd like to do is write some code



Well then you must be familiar with software programs that allow programming of defined rules. Rules that can be executed with a supporting broker. 

Rule based trading might be what you are after.

Maybe AmiBroker Auto-Trading interface with Interactive Brokers.


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## Wysiwyg (1 December 2009)

insearchofalpha said:


> Thanks again.
> My computer may be at home running this process while I'm at work so an alert via IM or email might be something I set up to get my attention while at work.  I may or may not be able to run this on a computer at work - not sure about this yet but I'll look into it.
> I unfortunately don't have the time during market hours to watch things too much so that's why I'm investigating the possibility of some quite specific alerts.  I'm quite happy to let the stock continue to rise and not be alerted if it rises and doesn't retrace more than 10% of my dollar gain from entry.
> 
> This is just one specific type of alert obviously but I'll no doubt come up with some more ideas.  I'll look at prototyping this by pulling (delayed) data from the yahoo website and if it works then move to pulling the data from quotetracker's local webserver.




To me it appears you are trying to undo a nut with a screwdriver. 

To perform in-depth calculations on your stock then you need a program that will allow you to write your idea and then will respond to you with an alert in the form of an e-mail or SMS message. This program will need to be fed real time data.
Alternatively, as I have mentioned, you can write a formula that will sell your stock whenever the conditions are met. 



> Formula - based alerts
> 
> * Ability to write complex formula-based alerts that can be displayed on the screen, sent to you via e-mail, plus play a user-defined WAV file.
> * Ability to run external applications via alerts - this allows automated trade execution


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## Wysiwyg (1 December 2009)

*Re: Quotetracker - who uses it?*



insearchofalpha said:


> Let's say I had identified CBA as a target stock and would enter when the price was just higher than yesterday's close ($50.60).  So entry at minimum of $50.61.  I would buy 500 shares.Assuming 2x brokerage at $15 ($30) my breakeven point is then $50.91.
> Now CBA opened today at $51.74.  If I got in at that price and still purchased 500 shares my breakeven price would be $52.04.
> CBA's price rose above breakeven so a few ticks past breakeven I would have set a stop loss at breakeven.  The high today was $52.95.  Lets just suppose that the intraday high was actually $79.00 but the stock dropped back to close at today's actual closing price of $52.80.
> If my system was to alert me when the stock dropped back 10% of it's gain from the high (compared to my entry price) I would be working with the following figures:
> ...



I have investigated parabolic moves which is what you are suggesting.
You want to be alerted when the share price has declined from the intraday high by 10% from your buy in price. You say you don't want to give up too much of a price spike but by the time you receive the alert and call your broker to sell then the price could be 20% lower. Prices tend to fall faster than they rise. I would like to know when the price is rising rather than falling.
As I said I think you are trying to undo a nut with a screwdriver.


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## insearchofalpha (2 December 2009)

Thanks again for your replies Wysiwyg.
I'll be lodging buy/sell orders online so won't have the delay of being on the phone to a broker.
I wasn't aware of Amibrokers auto trading interface.  That is good information to be aware of. Amibroker performs buy/sells directly from the program?  There's a special requirement for the broker to handle this 'rules based' trading?  So the rules are processed on the trading platform (ie broker) rather than by the software (Amibroker)?  Sorry for all the questions - I wasn't aware that there was software that did this.
I don't think I'm confident to let the system do things in a fully automated fashion just yet - I'd still like to see what the signals are and be able to act accordingly and hopefully quite quickly.

As for my plans - I've currently got things working such that I have some code which will calculate a stock's ATR by getting the required data from the yahoo website.  The next step will be to have the code retrieve pricing data for each of the stocks on my watchlist each 5 minutes.
Obviously Yahoo's data is 20 minutes delayed so once I have this working I'll convert my code to pull it's data from the local quotetracker webserver (connected to Commsec for realtime data).
I'm really wanting to see what is possible with rule based trading - as you put it - and I can prototype this without really spending any money.
What are your thoughts generally on this parabolic trading given that you have looked into it previously?


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## Wysiwyg (2 December 2009)

Mate *I'm still very much in the learning stage.* I am creating a trading system that has strict conditions to trade stocks. The software I am using to create the system is Amibroker Professional version with EOD data from Yahoo. I don't use the trading interface but that is one of many features within the Ami. program. 


> What are your thoughts generally on this parabolic trading given that you have looked into it previously?



 When a stock makes a parabolic move in my favour I would be looking to exit. That is tightening up the trailing stop in proportion to the move.

This is my work-in-progress so far. (indicator parameters top secret)

# Trading term -- until trailing stop exit
# ASX stock universe
# Long positions only
# Position Allocation is 20% of Total Equity 
# Position Risk is 2% of Total Equity when Total Equity less than 20k, 1.5% for 20k to 50k and 1% for over 50k
# Enter positions when ASX XAO Index day bars close above xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
# Exit all positions whenever an ASX XAO Index day bar closes below xxxxxxxxxxxxx

# Entry rules are ...
:- Exploration of stock universe with xxxxxxxxx formula
:- Select all results and move to watchlist folder 
:- Exploration of watchlist folder with xxxxxxxxx formula 
:- Stocks then checked for liquidity 
:- Enter position via limit order

# Exit rules are ...
:- Initial Stop Loss to be placed 1*ATR plot below lowest closing bar of previous 20 bars OR 2*ATR plot (whichever is highest)
:- First month move trailing stop up on 3*ATR plot
Condition 1 :- After one month holding position, move trailing stop up on 2*ATR plot
Condition 2 :- If stock price rises greater than 25% after position entered then move trailing stop up on 1*ATR plot  
:- Exit positions when trailing stop hit and exit all positions when an ASX XAO Index day bar closes below xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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## Wysiwyg (4 December 2009)

insearchofalpha said:


> As for my plans - I've currently got things working such that I have some code which will calculate a stock's ATR by getting the required data from the yahoo website.  The next step will be to have the code retrieve pricing data for each of the stocks on my watchlist each 5 minutes.



Prices stream automatically, updated every 20 seconds to Quote Tracker so I don't understand the "code retrieve pricing data" bit. What language are you going to use to create the program? 


> I'm really wanting to see what is possible with rule based trading - as you put it - and I can prototype this without really spending any money.



What you want to do is create a formula in ???? code that will alert you. Preferably by e-mail I take it. I feed Quote Tracker into Amibroker on a 1 minute interval. This means the data is automatically updated every 1 minute. Now with the data being fed to Amibroker in almost real time (1 min. behind) I can set alerts using this data.
What you want to do is create a formula (code) to trigger an alert that will notify you by e-mail, is writable in Amibroker.

*note from the price being triggered to e-mail in-box is about 1 minute and outlook express -> options has to be ticked for "Check for new messages every 1 minute".

The code in Amibroker to create a formula based alert is ...  



> Examples:
> 
> Buy = Cross( MACD(), Signal() );
> Sell = Cross( Signal(), MACD() );
> ...


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## bigdog (26 January 2010)

*Are there any QuoteTracker users that have been able to connect to Westpac Broking today?*

Westpac Broking Revised Website Was Implemented January 25.

Now I am unable to connect QuoteTracker to Westpac which does all the great things that Westpac Broking does not do.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Quotetracker support advised:*

John,

Yes, the Westpac web site completely changed. From what I can see, we will no longer be able to support this site for data in QuoteTracker.

Jerry 
qt.support@tdameritrade.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------

*I have now setup QT using the source "ASX Australia (Delayed)". *

This worked and last night I updated my QT portfolio (created by me) using the "ASX Australia" source and reconciled my QT with my Westpac Portfolio.

There was one Westpac error where the Westpac purchase cost was wrong and reported at 80 cents and should have been 40 cents.

There are two other sources "Yahoo Australia (Delayed)" and a "StockWatch (Delayed)

I will not know how long the delay is until tomorrow!
-- 20 minutes I suspect!
---------------------------------------------------------------------

*Does QT live feeds work with COMSEC or National Bank?*


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## Dennis (27 January 2010)

I've been using Westpac data in QT for preference over Commsec for 9 years.

It was so superior in speed it was not funny. Now back to using Commsec and it's like using a dial up modem.

Is there any statement from Westpac on the matter?

cheers

Dennis


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## bigdog (27 January 2010)

Dennis said:


> I've been using Westpac data in QT for preference over Commsec for 9 years.
> 
> It was so superior in speed it was not funny. Now back to using Commsec and it's like using a dial up modem.
> 
> ...




Dennis can you logon to QT using your Commsec
-- I note the QT description for Comsec Australia (Customers only)
-- from your comments I can only assume is is delayed and not "real time"

My QT connection to Westpac was real time and brilliant.


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## Dennis (27 January 2010)

Hi bigdog,

Comsec's user/password works similar to Westpac's. 

Comsec's data feed is live too, as data is available from the ASX open.  

Another way to confirm is to have a depth window open as you place the trade with Comsec at a level away from the bid/ask. Refresh QT and you will see the number of shares wanted or offered increase by your quantity.

Admittedly this can only be used on lesser traded stocks, but it will prove the data is "live".

The only difference between the 2 is really the refresh speed of Westpac.

cheers

Dennis


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## bigdog (2 February 2010)

I have now setup QT using the source "ASX Australia (Delayed)".  

This works with a 20 minute delay for "ASX Australia (Delayed)"
--- also the "data" no longer includes the number of trades count in the metrics

Also advised that Yahoo has a 20 minute delay.


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