If the Add-in does not start have a look at the troubleshooting.
Financial Link Manual
(version 1.1.6)
1. About Financial Link
2. Getting Started
2.1 Starting the Addin
2.2 Log-in to the user account
2.3 License management of the product
2.4 Temporarily disable the Add-in
3. Data Sources, Searching for instruments
3.1 Instrument Ids, Data Sources
3.2. Using Search
4. Retrieving data into Excel using Assistants
4.1 Assistants
4.2 Using the assistants. Specifying instrument ids
4.3 Using the assistants. Specifying the fields to use
4.4 Loading trading information for stock quotes. The Stock Quotes Assistant
4.5 Loading financial statements. The Financial Statements Assistant
4.6 Loading estimates. The Estimates Assistant
4.7 Loading financial ratios. The Stock Ratios Assistant
4.8 Loading price histories. The History Assistant
4.9 Loading currency rates
5. Loading data from any webpage into Excel
5.1 Setting up a link to a webpage. The Create Weblink assistant
6. General Settings of Financial Link
6.1 Trading data update general settings
6.2 Error handling general settings
7. Built-in financial excel templates
8. Functions Reference
8.1 Dataload functions Reference
8.1.1 ftrading
8.1.2 freport
8.1.3 festimate
8.1.4 fratio
8.1.5 fhistory
8.1.6 fnews
8.1.7 wlink
8.2 Technical Analysis functions Reference
8.2.1 Simple moving average
8.2.2 Volume weighted moving average
8.2.3 Exponential moving average
8.2.4 Relative strength index
8.2.5 MACD
8.2.6 Fast stochastic
8.2.7 Slow stochastic
8.2.8 Bollinger band
8.2.9 Price-channel
8.2.10. Momentum
8.2.11. Rate of change
8.2.12 Money-flow
8.2.13 Oscillator
8.2.14 Weighted close
8.2.15 Close-to-close volatility
8.2.16 Beta
9. Troubleshooting
Financial Link is an Excel Add-in you can use to load financial information into Excel. It uses public web pages to extract financial information like stock prices, company income statements, balance sheets, financial ratios, news and display it in excel cells. For this purpose Financial Link adds several user defined function to your Excel which you can use the load financial data. You don’t have to enter these functions yourself into the cells, you can use the built-in assistants to help you constructing the formulas necessary for data retrieval. These functions update the data automatically making sure all figures in Excel remaining up-to-date. You are not restricted to use only the pre-build data sources (public web pages): Financial Link Add-in can load and update any data from any web page you select. The add-in also gives you access to a library containing continuously increasing number of excel workbooks for stocks financial analysis.
After starting Excel the Financial Link Add-in should start automatically. If the Add-in started successfully you should see a ‘Financial Link’ menu in the Excel menu bar.
If the Add-in does not start have a look at the troubleshooting.
Before you start using the Financial Link Add-in you have to log-in to your account. Go to Financial Link/Log in. Enter your username and password then click on the ‘Login’ button. If you would like Financial Link to log in automatically next time you start the Add-in, tick the ‘Automatically log-in next time’ option at the bottom of the log-in window.
When logging into your account, Financial Link will obtain the licenses you own at your account. You need a free trial or a full license for the actual version of Financial Link you started, to be able to use the Add-in. Without proper license, the features of Financial Link will be disabled. For more information or obtain a license visit www.xlconsulting.net
If you don’t want the Financial Link Add-in automatically start up next time when you open Excel, you can disable the Add-in. Go to Tools/Add-ins in Excel and find ‘Financial Link’ in the list of Add-Ins available. Uncheck the Add-in in the list then click ‘Ok’. Go to ‘Tools/Com Add-ins’ and find ‘Financial Link’ in the list. Uncheck the Add-in here too. If you don’t find the ‘Com Add-ins’ menu, from ‘Tools/Customize’ you can drag and drop this menu item to any place to the ‘Tools’ menu. Next time you open Excel, the Add-in won’t start automatically. You can enable the add-in again by checking the box next to it in the available add-ins list.
In Financial Link you can specify stocks, indices you are interested in by instrument ids. A public web page which can be used to retrieve data from is a data source. All data sources have their own instrument ids. If you do not know the symbol of a company you can search for the instrument id using the search functionality. At the moment the following data sources are available:
Yahoo Finance: Provides stock trading quotes, financial statements, estimates, financial ratios, price history, news. Available instrument types: stocks, indices, currency rates. Coverage focuses mainly on US, West-Europe and Asia. Financial statements go back to 3 years. Yahoo also provides currency rates.
Reuters: Provides stock trading quotes, financial statements, estimates, financial ratios, news. Instrument types: stocks, indices. Coverage is global. Financial statements go back to 5 years.
Bloomberg: Provides stock trading quotes, news. Instrument types: stocks, indices, funds. Coverage is global.
Note: As data sources are using public web servers to load data, the performance and availability of their services can vary time by time.
To start a search, go to Financial Link/Search… The search window will open.
You can also open this search by clicking on the ‘Id Search’ button in the first step of any assistant.
First specify the data source you would like to search through. Then type the name or part of the name of the company. When using ‘yahoo’ as data source, you can also specify the instrument type and geographical scope of the search. The search will start when you click on the ‘Search’ button or when you press enter after type in the name of the company. The search results will be displayed in the list box on the right side of the window. From the results you can select one or more companies by double-clicking on them. The selected company will be displayed in the list box on the left side. You can also select a company by using the arrow button heading to the left or deselect with the arrow button heading to the right. When you click ‘Ok’ all selected symbols will be inserted into the active cell of the active workbook and into the cells below that. If you started the search from an assistant, the ‘Ids’ field of the assistant will be populated with the selected ids.
The easiest way of retrieving data into Excel is using the assistants. These will help you to insert functions into cells which are responsible for loading data. You can read more about the data retrieval functions and how to manually insert them into cells here.
The following table shows you which assistants you need to use to retrieve different kind of data types:
Assistant Name |
Data Type (Fields) |
Stock Quotes Assistant |
Stock, Index quotes, prices. Trading related information like price daily high/low, bid/ask, close price, volume, market cap. The available fields can vary by different data sources. |
Financial Statements Assistant |
Any information which comes from the annual/interim reports published by the company. The three main reports are balance sheet, income statement and cash-flow statement. |
Estimates Assistant |
Estimates are coming from several researches. For any line item of fundamental reports there might be an estimate however at the moment current data sources provide estimates for Revenue and EPS. |
Stock Ratios Assistant |
Ratios can be calculated using some line items of the company reports. You can calculate them in Excel however some ratios are provided ‘ready’ directly from the data source. Some example fields: P/E, Dividend Yield, ROE, ROA, Price to Sales, Current Ratios, Debt to Equity. |
History Assistant |
You can load a daily/weekly/monthly price history of a stock quote. |
Create Weblink |
The assistant allows you to retrieve any data from any web pages. You don’t have to use the pre-defined data sources which are built in to the Add-in, you can retrieve data from any web page you want. About weblinks you can read more here. |
You can start any assistant by clicking on it from the Financial Link menu. All assistant starts with the same first step: you have to select one or more instrument ids.
First select the data source you would like to use. Then enter the instrument id or ids to the ‘Type Instrument Id(s)’ field. If you type more symbols they should be separated by a colon or semicolon. If you do not know the symbol corresponding to the data source and company you’re looking for, use the ‘Id Search’ button to find the instrument id. Clicking ‘Ok’ in the search window will automatically copy the selected ids to the ‘Type Instrument Id(s)’ field. After you have specified the instrument ids click ‘Next’ to go to the next step of the assistant.
All assistants except of the History are designed to handle more Instrument Ids at the same time. You can enter more instrument ids separated by colon or semicolon in the first step of the assistants.
All assistants end with a common final step. This is selecting the fields (data types) you would like to load into Excel. The fields can vary depending on which assistant and data source you use.
Note: using the same assistant fields can still differ slightly if you change the data source. Data sources have their own field structure.
The available fields will be listed in the ‘Select Fields’ window of the last step of the assistants.
You can select a field by double-clicking one from the available fields list. You can also select a field by clicking the arrow heading to the right. You can select all fields by one click if you click on the double arrow heading to the right. Deselecting a field can be done using the arrow heading to the left.
In the lower part of the window you have a drop-down where you can specify the orientation of the data table that the assistant will create. You have two options:
‘Fields in columns’ - Fields will be displayed in columns while in the rows you will have different companies.
‘Fields in rows’ – Fields will be displayed in rows while in columns you will have different companies.
By clicking on the ‘Finish’ the assistant will end and create a data table starting in the active cell of the active workbook. The active cell will be the upper-left corner of the data table. You can change the active cell and specify the start point of the new table at any time even if an assistant is currently open.
This assistant can be used to retrieve trading related information of stocks like trade price, trade time, price change, close, daily high/low etc. With the data source set to ‘Yahoo’ you can also use this assistant to load currency rates into Excel. (more detailed here)
Note: Prices retrieved with this assistant are updated in every one minute (if not set else) and are delayed by 15-30 minutes (depending on the exchange where the stock quote is listed).
This assistant has two steps. First specify the instrument id(s) (see here) then select the fields. (more detailed here) The assistant will create the data table starting in the current selected cell in excel. Once ready the cells will update automatically in every one minute (or as per the update frequency setup in the Settings menu).
Note: Once you click on the ‘Finish’ button of the assistant the table will be created. The table then cannot be changed using the assistant, you can only alter the table by editing the functions in the cells.
You can use this assistant to retrieve financial statements information published by the companies. The first step is to select a company by providing its instrument id(s) (see here). After clicking ‘Next’ the report options window will appear.
You can setup the following parameters:
Report Type: This can be Balance Sheet, Income Statement or Cash-flow. Depending on the report type you choose here, the fields available in the next step of the assistant will vary.
Periodicity: Annual/Interim. Annual will load a full financial year report of the selected company. Interim will retrieve either semi-annual or quarterly report depending on what the selected company publishes.
Period: This is a negative number from the range [-1,-5]. -1 refers to the last reported financial period of the company. (last reported fiscal year/quarter depending on what periodicity you select). -2 refers to the one before the last reported period.
Units: You can specify the units the figures will be displayed in. If you leave this blank the figures will be displayed exactly as they come from the data source.
Clicking on the ‘Next’ button will bring up the usual last step where you can specify which fields and how you would like to be retrieved by the assistant. (more detailed see here)
Note: Financial statements data reloads automatically in every 30 minutes while Financial Link Add-in is opened and logged in to your account.
You can use this assistant to retrieve estimates on financial reports line items into Excel. After starting the assistant you have to specify an instrument id(s). (see details here) When clicking on the ‘Next’ button the ‘Estimates Options’ window will appear.
The meaning of the fields:
Periodicity: Annual/Interim. Annual will load a full financial year report of the selected company. Interim will retrieve either semi-annual or quarterly report depending on what the selected company publishes.
Period: this can be a number from range [0,1]. 0 refers to the current fiscal period (current fiscal year or quarter depending on what you selected for the periodicity). 1 refers to the next fiscal period.
Clicking on the ‘Next’ button will lead to the last step where you can specify which fields and how you would like to be retrieved by the assistant. (more detailed see here)
Note: Estimates data reloads automatically in every 15 minutes while Financial Link Add-in is opened and logged in to your account.
Ratios can be calculated using financial statements line items of the companies. Some ratios are provided directly from the data source. This assistant can be used to retrieve ratios provided by the built-in data sources of the Add-in.
In the first step of the assistant specify the instrument id(s) you would like to load ratios for. (more detailed see here). The second step is to specify the fields you require (see here). After clicking on ‘Finish’ the assistant will create the data table starting in the current selected cell in excel.
Note: Ratios data reloads automatically in every 30 minutes while Financial Link Add-in is opened and logged in to your account.
This assistant can be used to retrieve price history time series into Excel. The first step of this assistant to specify the stock quote by its instrument id for which you need a history. (more detailed here) After clicking on the ‘Next’ button, the ‘History Options’ window will appear.
Select the start and end date of the historical period you would like to retrieve the history for. You can also specify the date sampling periods, sorting, orientation of the output table. Then click ‘Next’
In the last step of the wizard you have to specify the fields you would like to see in the history. (more details here)
You can load currency rates (fx-rates) too into excel using the stock quotes assistant. You must use ‘Yahoo’ as data source and the instrument id should follow the format of ‘cur1cur2=x’ where cur1 and cur2 are the 3-letter code of the currency. For example ‘eurusd=x’ should be used as instrument id to get the euro vs. usd fx-rate.
The Financial Link Add-in is able to create a link to a part of a web page. This link automatically updates just like any other data so if the web page changes the linked part will change accordingly in your Excel. This way you can extract any financial figures from web pages that are not built-in to the Add-in. Always use the ‘Create Weblink’ assistant to set up references to web pages. Below you can read about how to set up a link to a web page.
First open the assistant via Financial Link/Create Weblink menu. The assistant has a window like this:
To create a weblink follow the steps:
1. Provide the web page address you would like to extract information from. Open an Internet Explorer and go to the desired page.
Copy the web address of the page from the Internet Explorer address line to the ‘Web address’ field of the Weblink assistant window.
Note: To avoid misspelling do not type the web address to the field. The best is to copy-paste the address from Internet Explorer.
2. Give a name to the link (optional). This step is optional. You can assign a name to any link you create. The name should be unique and will later identify the link you’re just creating. If you would like to use the same figure from the same web page in another cell apart from the one that the assistant will create for you, you can use the name to refer to this link. You can use the name provided here when you manually insert a wlink function. (about wlink function see details here)
3. Drag and drop data. Select the part of the web page you would like to link then drag and drop the selection to the ‘Drop zone’ field of the assistant window.
If you’re unfamiliar with the drag and drop technique follow this procedure:
Financial Link will now setup a link in the active excel cell which refers to the desired part of the web page. When the figure changes in the web page it will also change in the excel cell.
Notes:
Only texts, figures can be linked into Excel. You cannot link special symbols, images, whole tables. Select only a single word or number to be linked.
Financial Link can only setup the link if the figure hasn’t changed in the source web page on the server since you have selected it. After dragging your selection into the drop zone, Financial Link loads the web page and finds the value you selected on it. If web page has changed since you have loaded it into Internet Explorer, Financial Link might not be able to find the requested figure to link. In this case refresh the page in Internet Explorer and try linking again.
Since Financial Link looks for the value you dropped into the drop zone, it might happen (if more identical texts/numbers appear on a web page) that Financial Link will setup a link pointing not to your selection, but to the first appearance of the selected value on the web page.
You can change some general behavior of Financial Link using the Settings… menu.
You can see the Settings window of the Addin below:
There are two sections of settings ‘Trading data update’ and ‘Error Handling’
You can setup here how stock quotes should be updated. The settings here are applied to the ftrading function and the Stock Quotes Assistant.
Update mode:
1. automatic: data in Excel is updated automatically in the frequency specified in this dialog box
2. manual: data is not updated automatically. Data update can be initiated by the user by clicking on the ‘Update data’ menu item of Financial Link main menu.
Update frequency: set the update frequency in minutes from the dropdown menu. The frequency set here is only applied if automatic update mode is selected.
Here you can specify how Financial Link should handle internet connection and data parse errors. Internet connection problem can occur when source servers are down or not responding. If your computer cannot access to the internet because of any reason also a connection error will be triggered. Data parse error occurs if Financial Link cannot translate the data returned by source servers into requested fields. In both types of errors Financial Link can react in two ways:
Through Financial Link you can access to an increasing number of pre-built excel workbooks covering various areas of financial analysis. Available excel templates are listed in the ‘Financial Templates’ menu of the addin main menu. This menu is updated automatically if new templates are available on the central server store.
Financial Link creates new functions in Excel that you can use to load financial information. If you don’t want to type these functions manually into Excel cells, use the assistants showed in chapter 4. This chapter helps you if you want to use Financial Link functions without assistants. Generally Financial Link functions are ‘single’ functions. This means functions give back a single value in the same cell where the function is placed. There are some exceptions though: if you use the ‘All’ field in any functions or you use fhistory, fnews or technical analysis functions. In these cases a single function produces more values in a table, where the upper-left corner will be the cell where the function is placed.
Financial Link functions can be divided into two groups:
=ftrading(instrument_id, source, field)
Description: This function loads updating stock quotes into Excel. Update frequency is 1 minute by default, update is automatic. You can setup the update frequency in the Settings menu (more detailed here). The retrieved stock information is delayed comparing to the real-time stock prices. Delay is depending on the stock exchange of the selected quote.
Paramters:
Instrument_id: this is the symbol of the stock according to the valid symbology of the source.
Source: This is the name of the source you would like to use. Currently this can be set to ‘yahoo’, ‘reuters’ or ’bloomberg’. You can also use the abbreviation of the source names respectively: ‘y’, ‘r’ or ‘bbg’.
Field: The name of the field you would like to load. Field name should be a valid name according to the selected source.
There’s a special field called ‘All’ you can use. In this case function will create a table in excel enlisting all the fields and field values. The cell that contains the function will be the upper-left corner of the table. Please leave enough space below the function when using all as a field.
=freport(instrument_id, source, report_type, period, periodicity,field, units, showfieldname)
Description: This function loads financial statements (balance sheet, income statement or cash-flow statements) of companies. Financial statements updates in every 30 minutes.
Paramters:
Instrument_id: this is the symbol of the stock according to the valid symbology of the source.
Source: This is the name of the source you would like to use. Currently this can be set to ‘yahoo’ or ‘reuters’. You can also use the abbreviation of the source names respectively: ‘y’, ‘r’.
Report_type: This can have one of the following abbreviations:
‘BS’ for balance sheet
‘IS’ for income statement
‘CF’ for cash-flow
Period: This can be a negative numbers. -1 means the last reported annual or interim (according to periodicity, see next parameter) statement, -2 refers to the report before the last one, etc…
Periodicity: This can be one of the followings:
‘Annual’ for annual (yearly) reports
‘Interim’ for interim (quarterly or half-yearly, depending on the selected company) reports
Field: The name of the field you would like to load. Field name should be a valid name according to the selected source.
There’s a special field called ‘All’ you can use. In this case function will create a table in excel enlisting all the fields and field values. The cell that contains the function will be the upper-left corner of the table. Please leave enough space below the function when using all as a field.
Units: If you leave this parameter blank, function will display figures exactly as they come from source. Alternatively you can use the followings:
‘T’ for thousands. Figures will be divided by thousand.
‘M’ for millions. Figures will be divided by million.
Showfieldname: This parameter is only meaningful when using together with ‘All’ specified in the field parameter. Otherwise this parameter is ignored. The values of this field can be:
‘Yes’ : in the output table all rows will start with the name of the field. ‘No’ : rows will only contain a figure, no field name will be displayed. (default behaviour)
=festimate(instrument_id, source, field, period, periodicity, showfieldname)
Description: This function loads estimates of certain financial statement lines. Estimates updates in every 15 minutes.
Paramters:
Instrument_id: this is the symbol of the stock according to the valid symbology of the source.
Source: This is the name of the source you would like to use. Currently this can be set to ‘yahoo’ or ‘reuters’. You can also use the abbreviation of the source names respectively: ‘y’, ‘r’.
Field: The name of the field you would like to load. Field name should be a valid name according to the selected source.
There’s a special field called ‘All’ you can use. In this case function will create a table in excel enlisting all the fields and field values. The cell that contains the function will be the upper-left corner of the table. Please leave enough space below the function when using all as a field.
Period: This can be zero or positive numbers. Zero refers to the current fiscal year of the company, 1 refers to the next fiscal year, etc…
Periodicity: This can be one of the followings:
‘Annual’ for annual (yearly) reports
‘Interim’ for interim (quarterly or half-yearly, depending on the selected company) reports
Showfieldname: This parameter is only meaningful when using together with ‘All’ specified in the field parameter. Otherwise this parameter is ignored. The values of this field can be:
‘Yes’ : in the output table all rows will start with the name of the field. (default behaviour)
‘No’ : rows will only contain a figure, no field name will be displayed.
=fratio(instrument_id, source, field)
Description: This function loads financial ratios of companies (for example: p/e or price to book, enterprise value etc.). Ratios are updates in every 30 mins.
Paramters:
Instrument_id: this is the symbol of the stock according to the valid symbology of the source.
Source: This is the name of the source you would like to use. Currently this can be set to ‘yahoo’ or ‘reuters’. You can also use the abbreviation of the source names respectively: ‘y’, ‘r’.
Field: The name of the field you would like to load. Field name should be a valid name according to the selected source.
There’s a special field called ‘All’ you can use. In this case function will create a table in excel enlisting all the fields and field values. The cell that contains the function will be the upper-left corner of the table. Please leave enough space below the function when using all as a field.
=fhistory(instrument_id, source, field, start_date, end_date, datesampling, options)
Description: This function loads a timeseries into excel. You can load the history of several fields (like price, volume, close, open). This function updates the whole table of the history.
Paramters:
Instrument_id: this is the symbol of the stock according to the valid symbology of the source.
Source: This is the name of the source you would like to use. Currently this can be set to ‘yahoo’ or ‘y’ only.
Field: The name of the fields you would like to load. Field name should be a valid name according to the selected source. If you would like to use more field names separate the field names by comma. There’s a special field called ‘All’ you can use to get all available historical fields.
Start_date: this is the start date of the timeseries. This parameter should be in valid MS Excel date format. Take this parameter from a date-formatted excel cell.
End_date: this is the end date of the timeseries. This parameter should be in valid MS Excel date format. Take this parameter from a date-formatted excel cell.
Date sampling: This can be one of the followings:
‘D’ for daily sampling. One data point in timeseries for each day. (default)
‘W’ for weekly sampling. One data point in timeseries for each week.
‘M’ for monthly sampling. One data point in timeseries for each month.
If you leave this parameter blank, the default sampling will be used.
Options: You can use certain keyword to build up this parameter. Each keyword can have predefined values resulting different outputs of the functions. You don’t have to use all possible keywords in the parameter, if you leave out a keyword a default behaviour will be applied. This parameter should follow the following format:
Keyword1:Keyvalue1,Keyword2:Keyvalue2,…
The followings keywords are possible:
Keyword: ‘Transpose’
Possible keyvalues: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’
The default output table of the functions is formatted in a way where historical dates are in rows and fields are in columns. If you use the ‘Yes’ keyvalue the table will be transposed: dates will be in columns, fields will be in rows.
Keyword: ‘Sort’
Possible keyvalues: ‘ASC’ or ‘DESC’
ASC: dates will be sorted in ascending order.
DESC: dates will be sorted in descending order. (default)
Keyword: ‘Header’
Possible keyvalues: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’
Yes: there will be a header in the first row or column of the output table containing the names of historical fields. (default)
No: no header will be displayed in the result table of the function.
An example options parameter of fhistory can be the following:
‘Transpose:Yes,Sort:Asc,Header:No’
This will result a transposed output table, where dates are in ascending order and no header will be displayed.
=fnews(instrument_id, source, options)
Description: This function loads news headlines into excel. You can click on any headline to open the whole article in an upcoming internet explorer window.
Paramters:
Instrument_id: this is the symbol of the stock according to the valid symbology of the source.
Source: This is the name of the source you would like to use. Currently this can be set to ‘yahoo’ or ‘reuters’
Options: No options available.
Note: No assistant is available for this function.
=wlink(name)
Description: this function can be used to load any data of any web-page into excel. Before using this function you have to setup a link to the requested part of a web page using the ‘Create weblink’ menu.
Paramters:
Name: The name of the link as specified when the link was created in the ‘Name of weblink’ field of the ‘Create weblink’ window.
Note: Link names and definitions are stored in the workbook. After opening a saved workbook with links setup previously, you can use the names of the links without creating them again. Link names from all open workbooks in excel belong to a single name universe. So if you open a second workbook containing the same name as in the first workbook, the link definition of the second workbook will overwrite the link definition of the first workbook.
Technical analysis functions calculate the values of various technical analysis for a stock. All functions need a range to be provided via the hst_table parameter. This range provides the inputs for the calculation. The hst_table contains the price history of the particular stock. The range has to have the following columns in the following order: date, close price, volume, open price, high price, low price. Each row of the hst_table should contain these figures for a specific date in the past. Where it is not otherwise stated hst_table can contain the first two columns only: date and close price. This works only for such technical analysis where only price close data is needed to perform the calculation.
Technical analysis functions are not single functions. If you insert such a function in an excel cell, function will give back an array result in the same column where function is placed, starting in the cell just below the function. Result array will contain as many number of rows as many dates there are in the hst_table range. For each day in the hst_table range the value of the technical analysis will be calculated by the function.
=sma(hst_table, periods)
Description: calculates the simple moving average of closing prices of a stock. The average is taken based on so many periods as specified in the ‘periods’ parameter.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation
= wma(hst_table, periods)
Description: calculates the volume weighted moving average of closing prices of a stock. The average is taken based on so many periods as specified in the ‘periods’ parameter.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price,volume columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation
= ema(hst_table, periods)
Description: calculates the exponential moving average of closing prices of a stock. The average is taken based on so many periods as specified in the ‘periods’ parameter.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation
= rsi(hst_table, periods)
Description: calculates the relative strength index of a stock. The average is taken based on so many periods as specified in the ‘periods’ parameter.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation
=macd(hst_table, short_periods, long_periods, signal_periods)
Description: calculates the macd line and signal line of a stock. This analysis will result a two column array. First column will display the macd line, the second column will have the signal line.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
short_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation.
long_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation. long_periods should be greater than short_periods.
Signal_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the signal-line calculation.
= sto_fast(hst_table, k_periods,d_periods)
Description: calculates the k-line and d-line of the stochastic fast analysis for a stock. This analysis will result a two column array. First column will display the k-line, the second column will have the d-line.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. All columns of the hst_table required.
k_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the k-line calculation.
d_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the d-line calculation.
= sto_slow(hst_table, k_periods, k_avg_periods,d_periods)
Description: calculates the k-line and d-line of the stochastic slow analysis for a stock. This analysis will result a two column array. First column will display the k-line, the second column will have the d-line.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. All columns of the hst_table required.
k_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the k-line calculation.
k_avg_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the k-line smoothing calculation.
d_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the d-line calculation.
=bollinger (hst_table, periods, deviation)
Description: calculates the Bollinger band upper and lower line for a stock. This analysis will result a two column array. First column will display the Bollinger upper line, the second column will have the lower line.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation.
deviation: deviation will be multiplied by the number provided in this parameter to calculate bollinger bands.
=pricechannel(hst_table,periods)
Description: calculates the upper and lower line of the price channel analysis. This analysis will result a two column array. First column will display the price-channel upper line, the second column will have the lower line.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. All columns of the hst_table required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation.
=momentum(hst_table,periods)
Description: calculates the value of the momentum analysis for a stock.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation.
=roc(hst_table,periods)
Description: calculates the value of the rate-of-change analysis.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation.
=money_flow(hst_table,periods)
Description: calculates the money-flow of the stock for the specified date.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. All columns of the hst_table required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation.
=osc(hst_table, short_periods, long_periods)
Description: calculates the value of the oscillator analysis for a stock.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
short_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation.
long_periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation. long_periods should be greater than short_periods.
= w_close(hst_table, weight)
Description: calculates the weighted close price of a stock.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. All columns of the hst_table required.
Weight: weight of the original close price in the calculation.
=vol_ctc(hst_table, periods)
Description: calculates the close-to-close volatility of the closing prices of a stock.
Paramters:
hst_table: input range of the calculation. At least date,close price columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation
=beta(hst_table_index,hst_table_stock, periods)
Description: calculates the beta between a stock and an index.
Paramters:
hst_table_index: input range of the calculation containing historical data for an index. At least date,and index close columns are required.
hst_table_stock: input range of the calculation containing historical data for a stock. At least date,close price columns are required.
periods: number of periods that should be taken for the calculation
1. I cannot see the Financial Link menu in Excel. The addin does not start.
Go to Tools/Add-ins and check if ‘Financial Link’ exists and is checked in the list of Add-Ins available. If you don’t see ‘Financial Link’ in the list, click on ‘Browse’, go to the installation folder of the addin and find the financial_link.xla file.
2. I get ‘Could not open flink.dll. Intallation of the software might be corrupted.’ message when starting the the Financial Link Addin/Excel.
This can be because of the incorrect registration of the components of the Addin during installation. Try to reinstall (if possible with a Windows user with all privileges). Check or write to the installation forum at www.xlconsulting.net
2. I get ‘Unable to connect to xlconsulting.net!’ message during log-in
The Add-in cannot reach the server to get your account information. Check your internet connection! Make sure that any firewall let the Add-in connect to www.xlconsulting.net.
3. I get an ‘Access Denied. Reason : Free trial license expired’ message during log-in
You have a free trial license that expired. If you would like to go on using the Add-in get a full-license for your account.
4. A window called ‘Session error’ comes up saying ‘Your current session is not valid any more’
With one account (username and password) you can only log in and run one instance of the Financial Link Add-in. If this window appears, another instance of the Add-in (from another excel application on the same computer, or from another computer) used your account to log in so your current Add-in got logged off. Go to Financial Link/Log in menu to log in again. Make sure that no one else use your account to start the Add-in.
5. Time by time I got a ‘Connection error’ message from the ftrading functions while I have a stable internet connection. The error message disappears after some minutes.
Data sources using public web servers to extract data from. These servers might be overloaded with data requests when you try to load stock quotes information for too many companies at the same time, resulting that the web-server refuses http requests initiated by Financial Link. We recommend not to load more than 100 companies with an update frequency of 1 minutes. If you would like to load more companies, consider decreasing the update frequency to 2,3 or 5 minutes. To see how to change the update frequency click here. Also check the possible ways of handling connections error messages here.