Why use VBA?

You probably have a good market information system. But if you are a trader or investor you will eventually wish to test your own trading and investment ideas. There are great pieces of software out there that let you do just that. But if you have a copy of MS Excel then you already have the basis of a system testing tool. If you want to test your own trading ideas quickly then this blog is probably for you.

Of course you can also use Excel for real time data. Above is a screen shot of the FTSE 100 constituents in real time. It shows all of the FTSE 100 constituents and, at a glance, lets you see where they sit within their normal trading ranges.

This system flags up stocks that cross support and resistance levels with an audible warning, reading out the ticker, price, and the event that has triggered the alarm. This is handy if, like many retail traders, you work from home alone, and don't necessarily want to spend your whole day glued to the screen.

We need to do something fairly useful quite quickly. In my next post I'll set out how to open the VBE editor, create a code module and write then run a simple piece of code. After that we will grab data from your spread sheet, pull it into memory, do something with it, and put it back on the spreadsheet.