TraderXL Pro Package – DownloaderXL

I am always on the lookout for tools and applications that will make life easier an on the weekend I stumbled across one of these applications TraderXL Professional. In my previous article you may have read that I was using the free Stock Market Functions Add In for Microsoft Excel to download data. This proved to be quite an easy to use plug-in however it is by design limited in its functionality.

TraderXL comprises of a suite of addins for Microsoft Excel, the addins include:

• AnalyzerXL
• BulkQuotesXL
• DownloaderXL
• RTQuotesXL
• PredictorXL
• BacktestingXL
• ClassifierXL
• PortfolioXL
• OptionsXL

I was truly blown away with the scope of this group of applications and reviewing them will be no small task. In the next few posts I will look at the core features of this package and I will showcase how I will be using them.

You can download a free 10 day trial of TraderXL Pro.

DownloaderXL

DownloaderXL makes it simple to download Equities, Indices and Mutual fund data from all the major markets around the world. For equities the data includes open, high, low, close and volume fields. The indices data also includes open, high, low, close and volume fields. The mutual funds data includes the net asset value. You can specify three different timeframes daily, weekly and monthly.

Downloading Stock Data

In order to show you how simple it is to download data using this tool we will download data for MSFT from May the 10th to August the 8th. The image below shows the DownloaderXL menu in Excel 2007.

In order to download data you need to click on Download Prices menu item and a dialog box will appear as shown below.

From this simple dialog box all the data input variables can be set. It is very simplistic in nature but yet powerful. You can enter a single ticker symbol or a list of symbols to download data for. You can also set what chart type you want generated after data import. Once you are happy with the settings it is simply a matter of clicking on the get historical data button. After downloading is complete a new sheet will be added to your workbook like the one shown below.

As you can see it is a very simple process to download data and integrate it into your spreadsheets. It is also easy to conditionally update your stock data. In the next article we will examine AnalyzerXL.

You can download a free 10 day trial of TraderXL Pro.

About the author

Mark - Is a 28 year old form Australia. He has a Bachelor in Economics and a Major in CS. He is currently working towards his CFP. His interests include algorithmic trading systems, artificial intelligence, game theory and poker.