Hi,

I use a paid provider (TeleChart Gold, sometimes referred to as
TC2000, TC2005, TC2007 - 29.99/mth $US provided by Worden Brothers
http://www.worden.com/SoftwarePricing.aspx ). It has two huge
advantages going for it, that in my view have paid for itself many
times over:

1) AmiBroker works directly against it's database! Just install it,
then tell AmiBroker how to get to it (
http://www.amibroker.com/guide/h_extsources.html ) and never worry
about your data again. AmiBroker will auto update since it keeps a
pointer to the actual TC2007 database.

2) It provides the "true" end of day closing values *on the day they
happen*. Many data providers, possibly Yahoo - worth checking into,
will only show the closing value recorded within the strict trading
hours of the main exchange.

If a valid regular hours day transaction gets recorded a few minutes
late, it will not show up as the end of day closing value on that day.
But, the next day it will show up on the historical chart as having
been the actual close (e.g. if occurs on Tues but recorded a few
minutes late, some providers will *not* show it as the close for Tues,
but on Wed they *will* show it as having been the close for Tues).

I am not talking about extended hours trading here, I'm talking about
regular hours end of day trading whose recording is delayed by a few
minutes or some other cause. The phenomenon is real, I don't know the
detailed reasons as to why. When I complained to Scottrade about it,
they pointed out that the trade in question was recorded at 1 minute
past close, so didn't count for their end of day data, even though
they did show it as such the next day.

This makes a big difference when your trading signals are based on
closing price. It can literally be the difference between placing your
exit order for the next day, or missing the signal until it's too
late. Both Scottrade and Interactive Brokers suffer from this, and as
a result, their charts are useless to me.

Double check your close values against the following site for a while
(free quote site, not a data provider
http://stockcharts.com/index.html ). Every once in a while you may
find that the data you are getting from your service does not match
with the one from the link above, but your service will show the
corrected value the next day. In my experience, the stockcharts.com
quote is always accurate on the day of the trade and is the same as
what I get from TeleChart.

Good luck.

--- In amibroker@yahoogroups.com, "Pete" <dryheat3@...> wrote:
>
> I would like to know what sources you all are using for US Stock
> Market End-of-Day data. I have been using Yahoo Finance since it is
> free. The problem I am having is Yahoo's end-of-day data is not
> available until about 4 hours after market close. I need a source of
> data that is available only a couple hours after market close. I
> prefer not to have to pay for this data. But if that is my only
option
> then I would rather pay for the service then stay up late waiting for
> the data.
>