Prerequisites before using StockShareV2's MetaStock Data Feed Manager
A chart is simply a graphical representation of data. Before you can display a chart, you must have data. Price data for a stock, mutual fund or commodity can include Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume information for a specific time period. StockShareV2 can use price data that is stored on your local hard drive in the MetaStock format. There are several steps required by the user to obtain and maintain local data. These few steps are described below and will only touch upon the process in general terms because it is beyond the Scope of StockShareV2's MetaStock Data Feed Manager.
1) Data source – The data must come from some where. Many investors have access to data from data vendors or their brokers.
2) Down loader / Exporter – After you locate the data source, you will need to export the data periodically to your local computer. There are many inexpensive MetaStock data down loaders on the web to choose from.
3) Local Data Maintenance - Stocks can split, get de-listed, merge, change names or get added from your data source. All of these will have an impact on the local database. Therefore, the data on the local computer must be continuously be maintained by the user to insure data accuracy.
4) Local Data Directory - This is an example of a MetaStock Database on a hard drive. the directory will contain master and data files. We will refer to this in our example below.
Creating your first MetaStock Data Feed
1) Click on Data Feed the MetaStock Data Feed Manager.
2) The MetaStock Data Feed Manager dialog box will appear.
3) Left mouse click on the Green Plus sign to Add a new data feed definition. This Input screen will appear.
4) Next type in a name to call this data feed. This is user defined. In our example we are calling it: "My MetaStock Data Feed".
5) Then click OK. The MetaStock Data Feed Manager dialog box will appear back again. This time with the new name.
6) Next we need to locate the directory containing the MetaStock master and data files. To begin, we must select the appropriate drive in which the data is located. You can use the 'drag down triangle' for assistance. The default is C:\.
7) Then press GO and the Sub-Folders will populate. (Note: When ever you see " .. " this means you can double click on this and go 'UP' a directory.)
8) Next, continue to 'drill down' to the directory containing the the MetaStock master and data files. To 'drill down' you double click on the directory name.
9) As, you recall from our example above, we have to dill down through several sub-folders.
10) When you are at the appropriate sub-folders that contain the the MetaStock master and data files, you can either Add a single folder at a time or Add All.
11) In our example below we selected 'Add All' to move all the data field folders to the right side if the screen.
12) Click Save ... Then click Close ... Then click on Data Feed. The data feed you just created now appears and is available to use. Click on the new feed to select it.
13) Type in a symbol that you know is in your local database ... press return ... and you are now using StockShareV2 with your local database.
14) Not sure what a symbol is? Click on the magnifying glass ... a pop up search window will appear to help you. Note: You can also double click on a symbol in the symbol search list to launch a chart.
