Barchart.com Data Service

Barchart.com Data Service

Introduction

The Barchart.com Real-Time and Historical Data Service is a good quality data service offering data from many exchanges. This service provides real-time data, historical daily, historical tick and historical minute data. Data is provided for stocks, futures and indexes.

To get started, please see the Using the Barchart.com Real-Time and Historical Data Service section below.

There are various subscription options available with the Barchart.com service. One special subscription option provides real-time futures data and historical data without exchange fees if you have a brokerage account. Another special subscription option is 20 USD per month and includes real-time and historical data for Market Indexes only. Market Indexes are symbols that begin with a $. All of these options can be found on the sign-up forms linked to in the set up instructions below. All subscription options include Historical Daily data for all available symbols.

The symbol limits of 100 and 200 symbols on the sign-up forms, refer to the number of symbols you can concurrently receive real-time data on at the same time. They do not affect historical data.

Notice about Delayed Data: At the time of this writing, if a symbol requires an exchange fee be paid and either the data service pricing option does not include the fees or you have not subscribed to the fees, then you will not receive real-time updates or even delayed updates in the chart for the symbol. The 20 USD pricing option includes exchange fees for market indexes. So there are no other exchange fees to subscribe to.

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What is Included

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Using the Barchart.com Real-Time and Historical Data Service

  1. The first step is to sign up for the service by filling out one of these forms:

    You pay Barchart.com for the data and exchange fees. Once you subscribe to this service, you will be billed every month automatically to your credit/debit card from Barchart.com, until you cancel. You also have to pay for a Sierra Chart service package directly to Sierra Chart.

    When you sign up for this service through Barchart.com, you will specify a username and password. This username and password is not used to log into the Sierra Chart software. It is used only to connect to the data feed. Instructions on entering this username and password are given below.
  2. In Sierra Chart select Global Settings >> Data/Trade Service Settings. In the Service list box, select the Barchart.com service name from the list.
  3. Enter your Barchart.com Real-Time and Historical Data Service account Username and Password in the corresponding boxes. This is the username and password you specified in the form you filled out in step number 1 above. Do not use your Sierra Chart software account name and password. The letters are case sensitive. For help with your username and password, please contact Barchart.com at realtime@barchart.com.
  4. In the Download Historical Intraday Data as list box select either Minute data or Tick data. If you will be using Tick, Volume or Range charts, then select Tick data. There is more intraday Minute data available compared with Tick data. Set the Historical Intraday Data Download Max. Days setting to what you require.
  5. Internally all data is time stamped to GMT/UTC time. Set the Time Zone control in the Data Settings frame to the time zone you want times to be displayed in. For complete details and instructions to use the Time Zone control, see the Time Zone documentation page.
  6. Set the Intraday data storage time unit to what you require. If you are using Tick, Volume, or Range Charts, then set this to 1 tick.
  7. If you want to view Time and Sales data, enable the Maintain Time and Sales option.
  8. Click OK to close the Data/Trading Service Settings window.
    step2
    View Screenshot
  9. To connect to the data server, select File>>Connect to Data Feed on the menu. Note: You can only connect to this data feed from 1 instance of Sierra Chart at a time. You cannot use multiple instances unless you have multiple data feed accounts. If you try to connect from more than one instance at the same time, then each instance that you attempt to connect from will continuously lose the connection and reconnect.
  10. To open a chart, select File >> New/Open Historical Chart or File >> New/Open Intraday Chart on the menu. Type the symbol in the Filename box, and press the Open button.
  11. Continue with step number 2 on the Getting Started documentation page.

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Canceling

The Barchart.com Real-Time and Historical Data Service is a separately paid for service which is paid to barchart.com. Barchart.com is a completely independent entity from Sierra Chart. If you wish to cancel the service after having subscribed, then you must contact them by sending an e-mail to: realtime@barchart.com. Keep in mind that exchange fees are not refundable due to exchange rules.

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*Last modified Wednesday, 08th September, 2010.