It has been a little over a week now since I first installed Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition. My first impressions are that this is a very solid program. Visual Studio 2008 was released in late November 2007 and by now most investment banks have migrated their development environments from Visual Studio 2005 to 2008.

The first thing you will notice after installing Visual Studio 2008 is how quickly it loads. Even on my old Pentium four system Visual Studio is still snappy and responsive. Visual Studio 2008 includes the .NET Framework 3.5 and in the professional version you have the ability to target different versions of the .NET  framework. This is a huge advantage over Visual Studio 2005 were you could only target one framework. The .NET Framework 3.5 brings with it many additional class libraries and features. Some highlights include:

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In our previous article we used a simple method for importing stock quote data into Excel. Today we will look at a robust automated method for querying more data sources then just Yahoo finance. The Stock Market Functions Add-in for Excel is a free tool developed by by Randy Harmelink. The stock market functions Add-In allows you to import data from sites like Yahoo, Business Week, Reuters, Google, Bloomberg, MSN and many more. In the latest release there are beta features for several technical analysis functions like

• Accumulation Distribution Line
• Average True Range
• Commodity Channel Index
• Simple Moving Average
• Moving Average Convergence Divergence
• Exponential Moving Average

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My copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition arrived today and I made sure I installed it promptly. The software comes packaged in the new style plastic boxes, much like Office and Vista. There are two DVD’s one contains Visual Studio 2008 and MSDN documentation and the second contains SQL Server 2005 Developers Edition. I have not had a chance to properly take it for a test run but after I do I will post a review. The install process was extremely simple, however I uninstalled my CTP releases first.

Install Process

The install process is really basic and can be summarised in just three steps as highlighted below.

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This is part six of our Microsoft Excel Tutorial Series, if you haven’t read the previous articles you can find them here:

An Introduction to Microsoft Excel 2007

The basic’s data entry and navigation

Importing Market Data from Yahoo Finance

The basic’s of charting market data the line chart 

The basics of charting market data the bar chart

Today we will be looking at setting up candlestick charts in Excel. This tutorial will go through producing the two built in Excel versions of candlestick charts. Normally a candlestick chart will display open, high, low and close and the range for a given period. They are a great tool to quickly gauge price action.

Candlestick Chart 

I am going to assume that you are familiar with candlestick charts, however if you are new to these type of charts I have included some useful resources on the topic of candlestick charting below.

Introduction to Candlesticks

The Art of Candlestick Charting

Books

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If you have not already read the brief introduction to Excel 2007 I would advise you do so before continuing on with this tutorial series. You may be asking yourself what is the point using Excel as an analysis platform when there are products such as Wealth Lab and TradeStation available. I think that it is important that every trader be able to understand the underlying concepts of the indicators they are using and be able to analyse data. By undertaking this tutorial series you will also get the chance to learn by doing, which helps re-enforces concepts much better than if you were to just passively read the articles.

When you first start Microsoft Excel 2007, you will be presented with a screen similar to the one shown below. The key areas and terminology are also highlighted. Read the full story

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In trading as in any other profession it is important to have the right tool for the right job. In our daily life as a trader we work with a large range of data that requires analysis. If you have done any kind of statistical or financial analysis I am sure you will be familiar with Microsoft Excel, however if you are just starting out Microsoft Excel may be less familiar to you.

Microsoft Excel is a powerful spreadsheet based application. The main window is comprised of rows and columns laid out in a grid format. This allows for easy entry and analysis of data. The version I use and would recommend is Microsoft Excel 2007. There are many new features in Excel 2007 these include: larger workbook capacity, completely overhauled user interface, simpler pivot table creation, easier third party data access and a stream lined workflow. The image below shows a screen shot of Excel 2007 in action.

As you can see Microsoft Excel 2007 has a remarkably different user interface to earlier versions of Excel and if you are used to working with previous versions of Excel it will take you a little while to adapt to the new way of doing things.

Microsoft Excel allows you to create your own formulas and apply them to data. Excel also has many built in functions that allow for manipulation of data and the ability to record macros to streamline processes. Before I go through the interface of Excel 2007 there are two key things that you need to do.

1. Install Add ins. Read the full story

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