|  MAY 1988

Comparing data vendors by Steven B. Achelis

Comparing data vendors by Steven B. Achelis If you think choosing stocks and/or commodities to buy is difficult, try selecting a data vendor to use with your technical analysis software. At Computer Asset Management we have written software (The Downloader) to automatically ""download"" data from 13 vendors for use with our MetaStock technical analysis program and other compatible software. We found significant differences among these vendors, as you'll see in Figure 1. We gathered this information to assist our customers in choosing a data vendor, but keep in mind that there may be advantages to the various data vendors based on criteria not shown here. For example, it is very difficult to quantify the quality of data or the quality of technical support offered by the data vendor and/or software developer. Computer Asset Management believes this information is accurate, but cannot guarantee that it is—we suggest you contact the data vendors for additional details. Also, these comparisons were based on collecting data used by the MetaStock program. Features of the data vendors that are not used by MetaStock, such as news and weather reports, were not compared. We rated manuals and ease of use on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the best) based on feedback that Computer Asset Management has received from our customers and on Computer Asset Management's own experiences working with these services.

by Steven B. Achelis