Figure 1.
Shan Technologies LLC released two editions for HDLoader: Standard Edition and Professional Edition. The Standard Edition enables you to retrieve free "Daily" historical stock and/or option data. The Professional Edition enables you to retrieve free "Intra-day", "Daily", "Weekly" and "Monthly" historical stocks data, as well as "Intra-day" and "Daily" options data.
Step 1. Download the software
Click here to download the evaluation version of the HDLoader software. You may select any directory on your machine to save the software.
Step 2. Install the software
Open a windows explorer, locate the downloaded HDLoader.zip file, and double click on it. Most windows system will automatically expand the zip file into a HDLoader direcory (select "extract all files"). You may go to http://free-backup-software.net/index.htm to download a free and excellent software to unzip the downloaded HDLoader.zip, if you machine does not have a zip compression software installed. Double click on HDLoader.zip after you install the JustZipIt software.
Double click on the Setup.exe in the expanded HDLoader directory. An HDLoader installer frame will appear. Follow the instructions in the frame to install the software. The installer will create an HDLoader shortcut on your desktop.
Step 3. Run the software
Double click the HDLoader icon on your desktop, or move your mouse onto the taskbar at the left-bottom of your window screen and click on "Start->All programs->HDLoader->HDLoader" to run the software. See Figure 3.
Step 4. Configure the software
Press the "configure" button (move your cursor over a button you will see the button's name) as shown in the following screenshot, a configuration dialog will pop up. Open a Windows Explorer to create a directory in which you want to save the historical data (e.g., F:\shantech\, you may replace F with a C if you don't have an F drive on your machine). Type in the path of the directory you created for the historical data. Select "load all" or "update" to specify the time interval of data you want to download. "update" automatically set the end date to be your today's date. The format for the date is "MM/dd/yy", e.g., "05/11/05" for May 11, 2005. Click "Ok" to save the configuration and close the dialog.
Step 5. Add symbols / open a symbol list
Press the "add" button will add rows in the symbol list table. Enter the symbols of interest in the table. The symbol can either be a stock symbol or an option symbol. You can go to http://finance.yahoo.com/l to look up the stock symbol of a company. For options symbol of a company, you should click on the stock symbol and then click on "options" to get the symbol series of option chain of that company.
Step 6. Delete symbol from the symbol list
Select the row that contains the symbol and press the "delete" button to delete it.
Step 7. Adjust stock splits*. Some stocks have splits. For example, AAPL has splits on June 16, 1987, June 21, 2000, February 28, 2005. Their corresponding splits are 2:1, 2:1, 2:1 respectively. In order to reflects the splits in the charts accordingly, you should select the row for the symbol and press the "Adjust splits" button to enter dates and splits information.
Figure 2 shows the dialog for entering the June 16, 1987 2:1 split of AAPL. The corresponding format for date information is 06/16/87, while 2 for "after" split and 1 for "before" split, representing 2:1. Click the "Ok" button to save the split information and close the dialog.
If the stock has more than one splits as is the case for AAPL, repeat this step until all splits information are entered and saved. Figure 3 shows all the results after entering splits information for AAPL.
Step 8. Save the symbol list in the table.
Press "save" or "save as" button to save the symbol list you typed in the table.
Step 9. Download historical data
Press the "load" button to download historical data of all the symbols in the
table from the Internet. The data will be saved in the directory you
chose in Step 4. You can press the "configure" button to check the directory
you configured for data storage.
To download the historical data of a symbol in the table, you may select the
row that contains the symbol and then press "load selected" button.
Step 10. Create a new symbol list.
Press the "new" button. The symbol list in the table will be closed. Press "add" button to add symbols to the list.
Step 11. Exit
Click the "Close" button on the right-top of the frame to exit the software.
Step 12. Uninstall the software
Click on the Setup.exe in the HDLoader folder that was created in Step 2. Follow the instructions in the popped frame to uninstall the software.
Step 13. Order a registered version of the software
Send an email at support@shantech.com to
order a registered version of the software. Your check should write to
Shan Technologies. We will send
you a registered version of the software upon receiving your payment.
Mail your check payable to Shan Technologies LLC to the following address:
Shan Technologies, LLC
828 Oakwood Dr.
Columbus, GA 31904
Phone: 1-706-5360025
Fax: 1-706-6531845
Email: support@shantech.com
*: "Adjust splits" is available only to users of HDLoader Professional version.
If you are using MetaStock software for technical analysis and want to save hundreds of dollars for data feeding service, you may use the data downloaded with HDLoader. Follow the steps below to covert the data into a format that MetaStock accepts.
Step 1. Run the MetaStock Downloader in the MetaStock software you are using (the "Tools" menu).
Step 2. Select "Tools->Convert" on the menu bar. A "Convert Securities" dialog will appear (see Fig. 1). Select data folder for HDLoader and set the extension to *.txt. Specify output folder for the converted files to be saved at, e.g. "C:\My MetaStock Data". Click Browse button and add the data files you downloaded with HDLoader. You may use "Shift" or "Ctrl" and arrow keys on your keyboard to select the data files to convert.
Step 3. Press "Options.." button. A "Conversion Options" dialog will appear (see Fig. 2).
Step 4. Click on "Source" tab on the "Conversion Options" dialog as shown in Fig. 2). Select desired "Date Range", put a checkmark against "Traverse folders" and specify "Daily" periodicity.
Step 5. Click on "Destination" Tab (see Fig. 3). Choose whether you want to append data to existing MetaStock files or overwrite them and set the rest of the options as shown below. Click "Apply" and "Ok" to exit the "Conversion Options" dialog.
Step 6. Select an output folder in the "Convert Securities" dialog to store data for MetaStock software to use (see Fig. 1). Make sure that you have a backup of your data when selecting existent MetaStock folder as an output folder. Press "Ok" button to exit the dialog.
