Switching To Us From Another Vendor

Will you update my existing charts?
A common misconception is that charting programs that can be supplied by independent data vendors have charts "inside them" and that what a vendor does is update these charts.

But this is not quite how it works.

Instead, a data vendor will supply you with a price database that can usually sit anywhere on your machine. This database is then kept up to date by the vendor's updating application. What the charting program does is produce charts from the underlying data files in the vendor's database.

If you switch vendors, you are actually switching databases - going from one database that is no longer being updated to another one that is. Therefore if you switch to us as your new vendor, and find that your existing charts are "no longer updating", it is almost certainly because your charting program is still being pointed towards your previous vendor's data. What you need to do is point it towards our data, the particular location of which is established at the time that you run any of our data history installers.

Generally speaking, charting programs can be pointed towards a new database in one of two ways -

1. Through the use of an "Import Data" or "Scan" routine.
2. Though the navigation tools associated with the program's File > Open command. (You go File > Open and then navigate to the new location and open a security from there. The program then remembers the path you followed and offers securities from the new location next time around, which makes it appear as if the data is now "in" the program).

Can you update my existing data history?
No. Data vendors generally produce their own data histories, with folder structures that only their own updating applications are attuned to. Furthermore, they can have slightly different ways of representing a security's symbol and even have different symbols completely. For instance, some vendors add an exchange suffix to each symbol.