Displaying historical data on a chart.

Tradermain

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Hi guys, Have a couple years experience trading but am a complete newbie in the realm of inputting historical data into software. I simply want to have a look at intra day charts from years ago. Since I don't think a ready made source of that is available I figured purchasing historical data in the form of a text file from the likes of quantquote was the way to go. The problem is I wouldn't have the first clue how to then transfer that information into the form of a chart. And clear instructions have proved hard to come by on the net. I have some idea that ninjatrader and sierra charts can do something along those lines but haven't been able to make it work. Does anyone have experience with doing this? Anyone purchased from quantquote?(they seem to be highly regarded as sources of historical market data). Is there a product to simply import their data and have it display as a chart? Thanks so much in advance.

Tradermain
 
Although I don't use Ninjatrader and Sierra Charts I do import a lot of intraday data into programs such as Muilticharts, Tradestation and Metastock.

Generally the most common problem you'll encounter is that the data is not in the right format, e.g.:

Too many bars in one text file
Header missing or incorrect format
Fields missing, or unrequired fields present
Date and/or time format incorrect
Dates sorted by ascending or descending order, when it should be the other way round

All the programs I mentioned above explain in their respective help files what is required to make the import work, i.e. it's limitations and how the data should be structured.
 
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