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ERSA Troubleshooting |
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The following steps resolve of 95% of the problems with ERSA: #1 – Make sure you have the latest EXE from http://www.debry.com. #2 - In SpyGlass, make sure you are loading plenty of time periods - we would recommend at least 1,000. This is the “Time Periods to Load” field. #3 - In MetaStock, make sure you have the Explorer Options set to load a set number of time periods (more than 250 if you want to see the last year of ERSA results, and less than the number above, which is 1,000 in our case. Also must be less than the number of periods in the data files, so in our example 251 would be a good choice). Strong stocks in strong industries This exploration seems to cause the most problems, so we just added a new option to ERSA to help alleviate this. In the ERSA dialog, select the option "Do separate calculation on Folder Average folder" to tell ERSA to automatically calculate industry relative strength when it calculates stock relative strength. This will save you the hassle of doing two separate calculations, and will also allow the automatic update to do both calculations. Also make sure you run the Folder Average tool before running ERSA. You can verify if the folder average calculations worked by opening up one of the charts - the path will look something like "c:\metastock data\folder average data". If there are no data files, check the Folder Average path in SpyGlass at Tools | SpyGlass Options. In-depth troubleshooting If you are here, you’ve tried the simple fixes and are still having problems with viewing ERSA results in the Explorer. These steps are designed to step you through the ERSA process piece by piece. If the process fails at a certain step, send us an e-mail with the point at which is failed, to support@debry.com 1 – Calculate ERSA on your stocks. A - Run SpyGlass and bring up ERSA (Calculate | External Relative Strength). B - Make sure all of your folders show up in the list. C - The Time Periods in RS calc should be the look-back period of the calculations – 250 days approximates a year, 125 days approximates 6 months. D - The Time Periods to Load must be larger than the Time Periods in RS Calc – the number can be as large as you like since ERSA will load a stock even if it doesn’t have the number of Time Periods to Load. E - If you are going to “Require Data on Last Date”, make sure the data is updated through the “Last Date to Load”. F – Press Calculate. The dialog should look something like this: 2 – Check if the ERSA data was written to your hard drive. The ERSA files are placed in an “External Relative Strength” folder below your data folder. For example, “C:\MetaStock Data\sectors\basic industries - building & related\External Relative Strength”. A - Using Windows (either Windows Explorer, or double-click on My Computer) navigate to the aforementioned folder. The data is stored by ticker symbol, so USG Corp’s RS, for example, will be in the USG.TXT file. B - Double-click on the file you are interested in. The data should be brought up in WordPad and look something like this:
C - Look through the data and see if it seems reasonable. If we are this far, we know ERSA has calculated the data correctly, and now we just need to get it into MetaStock. Possible reasons that your .TXT file doesn’t show up: - Your hard drive is full. - Another program had the file open when ERSA tried to write to it. - The stock is a recent issue with fewer than the required number of periods for a calculation. 3 – Plotting the data in MetaStock. A - Fire up MetaStock and load the chart in question (USG Corp in our example). B - Plot the “DeBry ERSA External Relative Strength” custom formula from the Indicator Drop-down list in MetaStock. The chart should look something like this:
4 – Viewing the results in the Explorer. A - Set the Explorer Options to load fewer time periods than you loaded in Step 1 (we did 1,000), but more than used in the RS calc in step one (we did 250). For this example, we’ll use 500. Make sure your stocks have this many time periods, or the Explorer will toss them out (in our example, since 500 periods is about two years, the Explorer will toss out any stocks with less than two years of data. For this reason, you may want a smaller number, such as 251).
B - At the main Explorer dialog, select “DeBry ERSA Report” and then press Explore. C - The Select Securities dialog is displayed. You must add all of the folders that contain the MetaStock files that you used in the RS calc. If you are using MetaStock 7.x, SpyGlass includes a utility to add them for you – In SpyGlass, go to Tools | Add Folders. In MetaStock 8.0, the utility doesn’t work and we don’t have a better solution than pressing the Add Securities button, highlighting all of the securities in a folder, pressing Open, then pressing Add Securities again, etc. for the entire 74 folders. Luckily you only have to do this once. When all securities in all 74 folders are selected, press OK and the Exploration will run. D – When it’s done, press “Reports”. Your dialog should look like this:
E - You can sort by any column by clicking on the column heading, or picking the Sort button. Possible reasons that a certain stock doesn’t show up: - If a stock only began trading recently, it won’t have an ERSA value. Stocks must have at least the number of time periods in the RS calc to be included. - If you selected the “Require data on last date” field in SpyGlass, and the security didn’t update today, then you will have the problem. 5 - Still not working. If ERSA is still not working, note the step at which it fails, and any error messages or other pertinent information, and send to support@debry.com.
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