The market goes into volatile mode as we enters the earnings season. The market seems to be some sort of consolidation. Check out the daily charts for Dow Jones:

and for S&P500:

Check out the above Fibonacci Retracement levels. Wonder if traders all over the world are looking at the same levels or what! No wonder some say technical analysis works because of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I am carrying backtesting for a particular system which I intend to deploy soon. At first, I was tabulating the data manually. Then, I gathered it was too much work and decided to develop my own Excel backtesting program. I also have some experience in developing my own stocks screening Excel program before. So I thought I will share the Excel techniques for creating personalized trading-related Excel programs.

Why personalized Excel program for backtesting and stock screening?

To save time! Typically, I need to visit at least 3 financial websites or more to gather stocks data for every stock. And at every financial website, I will need to enter the stock ticker and click on the “submit” button for every stock. Usually, I would also need to copy the data I need to an Excel spreadsheet, so that I can have a consolidated view for determining which are the best trade opportunities.

With automation with Excel, I only have to click a button to commence the data gathering from multiple financial websites…and wait. Excel will collect the data for me and I can also customized it to present the data in the exact manner that I like it to be. This also reduces fatigue and chances of human error while copying the data manually for more accurate trade decisions While Excel is doing the work for you, you are freed up to do other things! Seriously, I rather be using most of my time brushing up my trading knowledge than doing data entry.

Why Excel?

I like its Web Query function for extracting data from webpages. I will move to Open Office Calc (Microsoft Excel’s equivalent) once its Web Query-equivalent function is working properly. Open source rocks!

So do stay tuned!

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