Information for intraday traders

APS was originally designed for use with daily data. But if one can generate intraday data, for example 30 minute bars, in the format required by APS (please look at the program manual), use an 8-digit indexing for the date and omit the time field, the program will identify intraday price patterns. This works because APS uses the date just to identify and sort the patterns only and it does not sequence the data according to dates during the search. Note that all patterns found have a minimum length of 2 bars and a maximum of 6 bars. This will not work well with tick data but it works with 5,15, 20, 30 or 60 minute bars. There is no limit to data file length, although it does affect searching speed. The usual procedure most intraday traders follow is using Excel to replace the dates in the date column with an index starting at 10000001.

Example of an intraday data file (portion of):

10000001 1492.25 1493.50 1486.75 1489.25
10000002 1489.00 1489.25 1482.50 1485.50
10000003 1485.75 1488.00 1484.00 1484.75

Versions 4.0 or higher  allow automatic creation of intraday files in APS format from a variety of ASCII text formats, including Metastock.

Since APS does not have a real-time interface, code for the intraday patterns found can be generated and implemented in a real-time trading platform like Metastock or Tradestation.

The procedure described below applies only to users of versions 3.8 or lower:

Please note that v3.8 ASCII conversion utilities do not work with numbers in the place of dates. An easier way to generate intraday data in APS format is with Excel and the following formula:

=concatenate(An&" "&Bn&" "&Cn&" "&Dn&" "&En) in column F, where n=row number.

This puts each data point ( cells A-E) one space apart in column F as a single cell. Delete the old data in A-E and export to text format (courtesy of  customer William C.).

For more information contact support