|  MAY 1988

Programming for speed Part 5 by Jim Summers, Ph.D.

Programming for speed Part 5 by Jim Summers, Ph.D. The past several columns discussed macros and led you through some elementary programming to show how to develop one of the indicators used in J. Welles Wilder's Directional Movement Index (DMI) system. The March column created range names for each row, moving down the rows while processing the price data. That technique is very slow and, for several months' worth of data, would tie up a machine for hours. To overcome this problem, this column introduces concepts which allow the program to operate with minimal cursor or range movement. As a general rule, if you can avoid cursor movement or updating range names, the program will be at its best in terms of processing speed. For purposes of illustration, we'll use the same 14 days of March 1978 Chicago Wheat data, with the range name displayed (Figure 1). The March column discussed data and date input macros. TR1 stands for the trading range for the day. The April column explained the definition and the math. Two important commands we'll introduce this month are essential to using Lotus 1-2-3 with the amount of data required for technical analysis. These commands are {Put} and @Index(...), neither of which were in Release 1A of Lotus 1-2-3.

by Jim Summers, Ph.D.