The Harmonic Analyzer ™
User Guide
Last Updated February 8th 2003
Contents |
Copyright/Trademark
Statements
The Harmonic
Analyzer™ , HA™, the HA™ logo are trademarks or registered
trademarks of HarmonicTrader.com, L.L.C. in the United States and in other
countries.
All other
trademarks are those of their respective owners.
|
Installation and use of the Harmonic Analyzer™ means that you
accept and agree to the following Terms and Conditions. If you do
not agree to these Terms and Conditions, do not install and use the
Harmonic Analyzer software.
|
Bugs/Questions/Comments
In terms of
bug reporting or questions on the software, please direct emails to HA_Support@HarmonicTrader.com
as follows:
If the email
is to report a bug then, the subject line of the message should be
prefixed with HA_BUG
e.g.
To:
HA_Support@HarmonicTrader.com
Subject:
HA_BUG This bit doesn’t work ...
If the email
is a question or comment then, the subject line of the message should be
prefixed with HA_QUEST/HA_COMM e.g.
To:
HA_Support@HarmonicTrader.com
Subject:
HA_QUEST How do I do this ?
or
To:
HA_Support@HarmonicTrader.com
Subject:
HA_COMM This is a fantastic piece of software ;-)
Introduction
The Harmonic
Analyzer (HA) is a revolutionary new charting and analysis tool dedicated
to the analysis of Harmonic (fibonacci) price patterns. To learn more
about Harmonic Analysis visit the HarmonicTrader.com website: http://www.HarmonicTrader.com
Chart
Example: Microsoft (MSFT)
A screenshot of the HA ™ is shown below for Microsoft (MSFT)
showing two back to back Harmonic Pattern matches (a Butterfly followed by
a Gartley). Both matches resulted in significant reversals. This guide
will take you through all the features of the HA.
Data
Sources
Before you can use the HA you will need some stock data to analyze.
The HA can download FREE end of day data from the Yahoo!™ Historical
Quotes website. The HA can also import end of day data from Worden
Brothers, Inc. TC2000® or Commodity Systems, Inc. (CSI) Unfair
Advantage®. If you intend importing data from TC2000® or
CSI Unfair Advantage® you will first need to install the software
from these vendors and subscribe to their data services. More information
on each of these data sources is provided below.
End of day data is freely available from the Yahoo!™ finance
website http://quote.yahoo.com/ The
data for the current day is available several hours after the market
closes.
Worden
Brothers, Inc. TC2000®
Worden Brothers, Inc. offers a software charting tool named TC2000® which also takes care of downloading and maintaining
their end of day data on your PC. The HA interacts with TC2000® in order
to import data into the HA. At the time of writing this guide, TC2000® is
available FREE and is obtained by requesting a CD ROM via their website
(the TC2000® CD also includes historical data). The TC2000® end of day
data service costs $29.95/mnth. For more information refer to Worden
Brothers, Inc. TC2000® website: http://www.tc2000.com/
Commodity Systems, Inc. (CSI) Unfair Advantage®
Commodity Systems, Inc. (CSI) offer a software charting tool named Unfair Advantage®
which also takes care of downloading and maintaining their end of day data
on your PC. The HA interacts with CSI Unfair Advantage® in order to
import data into the HA. At the time of writing this guide, the CSI Unfair
Advantage® software costs $150 for the North American Data version and
$300 for the World Data version. The end of day data service starts
from $19.95/mnth. More information regarding CSI Unfair Advantage® and
the data services offered by CSI can be found at CSI’s website: http://www.csidata.com.ua.html/
|
DISCLAIMER: HarmonicTrader.com
can accept no responsibility for the timeliness, availability or
accuracy of the data downloaded or imported into the HA from these
data sources. The data downloaded or imported into the HA is for
your personal use only and you are strictly prohibited from
redistributing this data. Please refer to the respective data
sources for further terms and conditions of use. |
Downloading/Importing Price Data
To download/import price data, click on the download
data button
on the toolbar
and the Download
Price Data
dialog will popup. First select the data source that you wish to use
either Yahoo, TC2000® or CSI Unfair Advantage®.
The first time
you select TC2000® or CSI Unfair Advantage®, a dialog will
popup which will install some additional software required by the HA to
import data from TC2000®/CSI Unfair Advantage® programs.
Press the
green “Install TC2KSVR”/”Install UASVR” button on the dialog and
the additional HA software will be installed.
If you do select TC2000® or CSI Unfair Advantage®
as the data source, the Data Downloader buttons change from saying “Download” to “Import”. In the remainder of this text “Download”
has been used to identify the various options but if you are using TC2000®
or CSI Unfair Advantage® then the dialog will actually say “Import”.
|
IMPORTANT: |
Before you import data from TC2000®/CSI Unfair Advantage® you
must first run TC2000®/CSI Unfair Advantage® to update the stock
databases maintained by these tools. |
In the “Download New Price Data For:”
text box type type the symbol for the stock that you wish to download data
for. In the example below, the symbol for Microsoft has been entered (MSFT).
Set the “Download
From:”
date to specify how far back you wish to download data from. For example, 01/01/1978.
Generally speaking, the more data you have the higher the probability
there is of finding large (multi month/year) harmonic pattern matches.
Make sure you are connected to the internet and then press the Download button or press the Enter key and the data will be
downloaded. As shown below, messages appear in the data downloader
dialog’s log window to keep you updated on the progress of the download.
Repeat this process until you have downloaded data for all the stocks you
are interested in.
If you are going to be downloading data for a lot of stocks then
consider creating a stock group file as described HERE.
This feature allows you to specify a list of stocks you want to download
data for and the Data Dowloader will then be able to download the data for
all the stocks in one go.
IMPORTANT
NOTE: If the downloader log window reports that there were errors during
the download (as shown below) this may mean that the data server was busy
or currently off-line. You should try again later. If there were only a
small number of failures then you can press the Retry
button (this button is described in the Retry Updating Price Data
section).
After each
trading day you will need to update the data for all the symbols in the HA
Data folder.
|
IMPORTANT: |
Before you import data from TC2000®/CSI Unfair Advantage® you
must first run TC2000®/CSI Unfair Advantage® to update the stock
databases maintained by these tools. |
Click on the “Update
Existing Price Data For:” button and the symbol list will become active. If you leave the
symbol list set at “ALL SYMBOLS” then the price data for all stocks you have data
for will be updated. By default an incremental
update will be performed. This means the Harmonic Analyzer will only
download enough data to bring each of your stocks data up to date. To
start the incremental download press the “Download”
button. The downloader dialog window will display the status of the
incremental download as it proceeds.
·
IMPORTANT NOTE: Every couple of weeks or so, it is a good
idea to do a FULL download formal
SYMBOLS.
The data vendor from time to time may make corrections to the data and
these corrections may be missed if you do an incremental download. A FULL
download ensures the integrity of your data. Also, if the stock goes
through a stock split, a FULL
download
must be performed AFTER the split to ensure your data reflects the split. A FULL
download is achieved by selecting the “FULL Download From”
setting rather than the Incremental setting.
RETRY
Updating Price Data
When downloading data for multiple stocks some data may fail to
download due to the data server being busy or off-line. As shown below,
out of the 8 downloads 2 failed.
The Retry button allows you to attempt the FAILED
downloads
again. If you are downloading data for a lot of stocks and you are getting
a lot of failures (maybe the data server is very busy) you can abort the
entire download by pressing the ABORT button. You can then try again later. As shown below, pressing the Retry
button
results in the data for CSCO and IBM being downloaded again (this time successfully).
IMPORTANT:
If you see DATA MERGE FAILED messages (see screenshot below) then you must
do a FULL download for these stocks instead of an incremental
download.
You
can select a single stock from the list and only the data for that stock
will be updated. In this case Cisco
(CSCO)
has been selected. Once you have made the appropriate selection press the
“Download”
button.
The log window
of the dialog will keep notified with the progress of the download.
Important
Note: Once the Harmonic Analyzer has initialized and you have downloaded
all the data that you need, there is no need to stay connected to the
internet and you can go off-line if you wish.
Chart
Basics
Once you have downloaded some data you can open up the charts for
these stocks by pressing the open chart button
on the HA
toolbar or typing
CTRL-O.
From the
resulting Open
Chart
dialog select the stock symbol from the “Open Chart For:” drop down list or start to type the symbol name
in the Find: text box ().
Press the “Open Chart”
button or press the Enter key. The chart will be loaded and will appear in
the chart window. The chart will be automatically scaled to fit the chart
window. You can move around the chart using the horizontal/vertical
scrollbars, zoom in
(SHIFT-I),
zoom out
(SHIFT-O)
and jump scroll to the most recent price action
. You can also
move around the chart by dragging the mouse around the chart window
(moving the mouse around the chart window while the left mouse button is
pressed). The chart will scroll up/down/left/right as the mouse is
dragged. As you move around the chart the status bar at the bottom of the
window shows the open, high, low and close for the price action closest to
the mouse. The price action closest to the mouse is highlighted in the
chart and in the technical indicator window.
You can record
notes about the current chart in the NOTES
text area to the left of the chart window. This text area can be minimized
by pressing the left pointing arrow at the top of the vertical bar that
divides the notes from the chart. Pressing the right pointing arrow at the
top of the vertical bar will expand the notes again. The notes get saved
with the chart and are restored again when the chart is reloaded.
The horizontal
splitter separating the chart and technical indicator windows can be
dragged up or down to resize these windows. The vertical splitter
separating the chart and the NOTES section can be dragged left or right to resize the notes/charts
windows.
You can
display the chart as a candlestick, bar or line chart by selecting the
appropriate option from the View menu. The grid lines can be shown/hidden by pressing the show/hide grid
lines button
on the HA
toolbar.
Press the gap
button
or type CTRL-G
to show/hide price gaps. This is explained in more detail HERE.
You can
switch between daily and weekly charts by pressing the appropriate radio
button on the HA toolbar
or typing SHIFT-D
or SHIFT-W.
All the colors
used by the HA are user definable and can be changed by selecting Color
Settings ...from
the Options
menu. This is described in more detail HERE.
Trendlines can
be drawn in the chart window and this is explained HERE.
Text annotations can be added to the HA charts and this is explained HERE.
You can
overlay Simple or Exponential Moving Averages (SMA/EMA) onto the price
chart by checking the appropriate check boxes. The type of moving average,
period and color of the line used can be set by selecting Define
Moving Averages ...
from the Indicators menu. This is described in more detail HERE.
The HA
supports a number of customizable Technical Indicators and displays these
in the Technical Indicator window. This is described in more detail HERE.
Having made
changes to a chart e.g. drawn trendlines, added text annotations or
changed indicator parameters, you can save the chart by pressing the save
button on the HA toobar
or by typing CTRL-S.
A number of the HA dialogs require you to specify a stock symbol
name. Common to all these dialogs is a drop down symbol list which lists
all the stock symbols that you have downloaded data for. To the right of
the symbol list is a Find text box.
If you click
on the symbol list the symbol list will expand and a vertical scrollbar
will appear to the right of the list allowing you to scroll through the
symbols in the list.
If there are a
large number of symbols in the list you can type the first letter of the
symbol name that you are looking for and the list will jump to the first
symbol that starts with that letter. If you type the same letter again the
list will scroll to the next symbol that starts with that letter and so
on.
As an
alternative to scrolling through the symbol list you can start to type the
name of the symbol in the Find text box. As you type the symbol name the symbol list will dynamically
scroll to the symbol that starts with the letters typed so far. As soon as
the symbol list shows the symbol you are looking for you can stop typing.
For example, you may only need to type ‘C’ and then ‘S’
in the Find
text box in order for the symbol list to display CSCO.
The HA
Color Chooser
The HA Color Chooser will appear whenever you press the Set Color
button on the HA toolbar (to the left of the Trash Can button) or when you
click on a color in the Color Settings Dialog (explained HERE)
or the Define Moving Averages dialog (explained HERE).
By default the HA Color Chooser will display a selection of Swatches
(small colored squares). You can click on any one of these squares to
select that color. Once you’ve made your selection press the OK button.
If none of the swatches match the color you are looking for, select
the closest match and then press the HSB
tab. The colored square in the center of the dialog represents a range of
shades for this color. Click on the white circle and drag it around the
shaded square until it is on top of the shading you require.
Pressing the RGB
tab provides a further alternative for specifying the required color.
