Hi, I'm new here and am considering buying and starting with amibroker. But I need to decide how I'm going to get quote data. I haven't used a program like this in a long while, but I did some years ago and was able to get free intraday data from Schwab, where I do all my trading. Does anyone using amibroker get their data from Schwab? Can you tell me how, or a reason you cannot? I'm surprised this topic hasn't already been raised.
@DougM getting intraday quotes from a data provider, in general, requires a specific data plugin (native - i.e., included in the installation of AmiBroker - or from a 3rd party developer).
These plugins are built when the data vendor/broker provides an API (see this thread where I elaborate a bit on this topic).
AFAIK Schwab does not provide any API to 3rd party developers for trading stocks (although they seem to have something for OptionXpress customers to handle options and futures).
In certain cases, an alternative is the use of DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) , but again the broker platform has to offer natively such data exchange mechanism (this is something to ask specifically to your brokerage), but I suspect that also this option may be unsupported by Schwab
Please note that I never used this broker so I may be wrong. Be sure to verify the above information directly with their customer service.
Unfortunately, some widely used services that did provide free intraday data no longer work, but @Tomasz is always looking for some alternatives.
In the meantime, if you need USA markets real-time data the most frequently recommended alternatives (eSignal, IQFeed, InteractiveBrokers) are listed on this page:
http://www.amibroker.com/guide/h_quotes.html
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Thank you beppe! I really appreciate your reply. I did address this at both ends, and was hugely disappointed in Schwab telling me that they no longer provide data feeds to anything outside of their very limited Streetsmarts Edge tool. Frustrating. A couple decades back they did so and I used it with TC2000. So, I'll review the alternatives that AB suggests on that page. Need to understand better how important "backfilling" is too. Never heard that term. Something to worry about for doing simple scans and backtests of simple formulas? I think that's discussed on other threads here, so I'll check them out. Thanks again.
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