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There are many ways to make a living. Some try to speculate in the financial markets by looking at charts and numbers, in order to come up with a conclusion, which should lead to financial freedom and more.
This paper should explain a little about historical financial data and its limitations.
EasyStockDater downloads free historical stock quotes from public web portals.
It is extracting only the essential data, and is preparing and saving the gained data into a usable file, for further analysis.
Theoretical, we could download all kind of data. Weather, statistics of all sorts, lottery numbers, etc. The problem is, that web portals which provide free data, any kind of data, change, like wind and fashion, from time to time.
This is making a constant download and extracting script for a program difficult or impossible, hence, man and brain power is required from time to time to adapt to the changes.
There are few things a project leader of gaining data can guide and plan. One is that he or she is selecting a web site or source which looks stable and constant for more than just few moments.
This means the programmer, also there might be hundreds of other possibilities and sources available, will limit him or herself to few major web portals, to keep work load to an acceptable level.
The web portals for them self displaying the goodies we try to fetch for free, beside commercials and try to attract as much as possible viewers. The more viewers they can attract the more they can ask ad spaces.
Since easyStockDater is downloading only the desired data, without looking at commercials, the web portal mangers will also to try change from time to time their strategy, to disorder such tools.
A method to make the live less easier for a free data fetcher, is for example, present data only in raw form. This could mean stock splits are not adjusted. Or the data might have data spikes and other forms of disorders.
Also for most applications and users, this may be not a big problem, it is from a programming stand point, if you aim for perfected solution.
Delaying the updating process of the free data, is also a concern, which not really can be re-solved. One has to decide him/her self, whether this will disrupt the style of operations he or she is conducting.
Despite of all the problems and troubles free data might come along, its still worth the effort for beginners as for pros.
Summary
- Free data's may be delayed - Data quality sometime can be disrupted - If data source changes it layout, software may not work properly or at all - Free data is a real alternative if a close to 100% solution is enough for the user
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