Frequently Asked Questions

General

1. Why is the application name App::financeta ?

   The commandline name is financeta but the Perl package that it invokes is called App::financeta. The ta in financeta stands for technical analysis.

2. Where can I get technical support ?

   You can look for help by citing your issues on the github link here. If you like to find the developers on IRC, you can try looking for help on the #pdl channel on irc.perl.org.

3. Why did you select Perl to write the language ?

   Perl is the only scripting language I know apart from R. Python’s whitespace restrictions are an abomination, hence I do not use it. Once you know Perl, all other scripting languages seem like toys (I am looking at you Ruby!).

4. Why is this a desktop application and not browser based ?

   For the very simple reason that if it is a desktop application, your computer that you have already paid for is doing the work and not some server that needs to be paid for by me. Another reason being that browser fragmentation today is greater than desktop fragmentation !

5. When will real time trading be available ?

   In trying to be realistic, we can estimate early to mid 2015.

6. Does this software work only for US stocks ?

   We currently use the Perl package Finance::QuoteHist for handling stock downloads. As long as it supports your stock symbol, we support it. Yahoo! is one of the main data sources being used in Finance::QuoteHist, but others are also available. If you need your custom exchange data or country’s stock symbols added, please contact the Finance::QuoteHist developers and have them add it so that we can benefit downstream from their changes.

7. Do I need to know Perl or PDL to write my strategies ?

   As of today, yes. We are trying to eliminate that by developing a simple syntax for writing the strategies. We are also trying to avoid developing something ugly like the existing domain specific languages (DSL) provided by proprietary software. So far PDL is pretty awesome.

Operating System

1. Why is it so hard to install on Microsoft Windows® ?

   Microsoft Windows® does not natively come with Perl, and Perl was originally designed with a Unix-mindset. Hence, installing on Microsoft Windows® can be a time consuming task. But once installation is complete, it works as well as any other operating system.

2. Will ready-to-install packages be provided for various operating systems ?

   As of today we do not have this capability yet, but once all the documentation is ready we shall try to create ready-to-install complete packages for all supported operating systems.

User Interface

1. Why does the UI look like the way it does ?

   We use Prima which is a very easy to use GUI toolkit. Prima is cross-platform and works well for our needs.

2. The UI looks ugly, will you make it look shiny ?

   Our aim is to have a UI that uses less CPU power, runs fast and doesn’t get in the way of making money. If you care about looks, go look at yourself in the mirror.

3. Why are you using Gnuplot for plotting ?

   Two reasons:

   1. Gnuplot is already an awesome plotting engine and the package PDL::Graphics::Gnuplot is well supported and works really well out of the box.
   2. We will eventually try to help the developers of the package PDL::Graphics::Prima add features required by the software, so that we can embed the plots in the UI itself instead of having it as a separate application running on the side. However, this will take a while since a lot of functionality, already available in Gnuplot, will have to be added.

4. Will there be a search and auto-complete feature added to find stock symbols ?

   Yes that is the plan right now but it is lower on our priority list. For now, you can use the search feature on Yahoo! Finance instead.

Technical Analysis

1. Why do some indicators not work ?

   Please let us know what you’re trying to do so that we can see if the problem is the indicator or the data.

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