of the research reports. Twenty years ago, a portfolio manager s typical response would be that a decision would have to wait until the firms monthly strategy meeting. Ten years ago, the money manager would reply that he would need the weekend to pore over all the research that had piled up on his desk during the week. Today, the salesman quips that he simply telephones his portfolio manager clients, who usually give him an order over the telephone without having seen any research report about the stock in question.

There are three general classes of real-time data. The distinction between the three is made by cost and services provided. The so-called upper tier is intended for use by institutional traders and portfolio managers, and brokerage firm salespeople and analysts. The medium tier attracts the individual investor and independent trader. The lower tier is designed for the budget-conscious.

End-of-Day Data

End-of-day (EOD) data consists of information summarizing a securitys activity for one day. The market participant who has a longer-term horizon and/or needs to understand the long-term trend will benefit from this data type. EOD data is used by traders and investors to construct price charts with the help of charting software. As the name implies, the minimum time interval on a price chart using end-of-day data consists of one day. Typically, the data is downloaded from the vendors database, either via a telephone call or an Internet connection. The data fields themselves are fairly standard-open, high, low, close, and volume. An open interest data field is added for futures.

Each data vendor uses one or more file formats with the ASCII format being popular. Various financial software packages may also have their own proprietary data format. Pick a software application that accepts a large variety of data formats. You never know in what format some critical piece of data may be available.

End-of-day data is usually available for downloading anywhere from 1 to 2 hours after the markets close.

Data Sources

Real-Time Data, Premium Class

In the equity arena, the primary vendors of these premium products are ADP, ILX Systems, Bridge, and Quotron. In the fixed-income sector, the dominant providers are Bloomberg, Bridge, and Reuters.

Some of these products overlap and provide quotes on some or all security types. Others specialize in just one area. Each product comes with a slew of optional third-party add-on modules. For example, if you want to stay abreast of breaking news, these offerings will allow for a subscription to a newswire service. If you need to keep

up with earnings reports, this, too, is possible through a subscription to one of the three dominant providers of corporate earnings data: First Call, IBES, and Zacks Research. If you require a quality research service to augment your trading, chances are a premium provider will be able to deliver the goods here as well.

For the most part, these quotation services are not able to connect with real-time charting software such as Omega Researchs TradeStation® (TradeStation is a registered trademark of Omega Research, Inc.) or Equis MetaStock RT. This is a major disadvantage as these two real-time charting software packages are the most popular among traders.

Table A. 1 lists various premium real-time data vendors and their products.

Real-Time Data, Medium Class

There are four predominant services in this category of real-time data. Far and away the most popular is Data Broadcasting Corporations (DBC) product called Signal. The other three are DBCs datafeed called BMI (Bonneville Market Information), Standard & Poors ComStock, and FutureSource.

For several reasons, the medium class appeals most to serious individual investors and traders. First, many of these market participants are seeking real-time quotes, and nothing but. Therefore, it makes little sense to subscribe to a premium service that offers quotes as well as a multitude of less important features at a price several times that of a medium-class real-time data service.

Second, the two most popular real-time charting programs, TradeStation by Omega Research, Inc., and Equis MetaStock RT, operate mostly with data generated from medium-class data vendors.

A third reason medium-class real-time data services are the preferred choice of traders concerns the plethora of third-party software products that are intended to work in conjunction with TradeStation and, to a lesser extent, MetaStock RT, and the many smaller software developers whose products will only function with real-time data generated from one of the leading medium-class providers.

Finally, most medium-class data services offer at least two and, in some cases, four different means of transmission. Depending on where the trader resides, there exist one or more of these distribution mediums: FM radio, satellite, TV cable, leased line, or Internet. Selection should be based on cost, convenience, speed, and accuracy (see Appendix for details).

The serious trader, then, who is desirous of nothing but tick data for real-time charting purposes, will undoubtedly find the medium class of data provider to be just what the doctor ordered.

Table A.2 lists various medium-class real-time data vendors and their products.

Real-Time Data, Budget Class

The budget-conscious market participant is being catered to more and more as technology opens new frontiers. The low cost of distributing data over the Internet, in

Table a. 1 Premium real-time data vendors and their products-premium class

Data Provider

Distribution Medium

Securities

ADP*

201 E. Park Drive Mount Laurel, NJ 08054 800-367-9447 www.fis.adp.com

Bloomberg Financial Markets 499 Park Avenue New York, NY 10022 212-318-2300 www.bloomberg.com

Bridge Information Systems

3 Wotld Financial Centet, 27th Floor

New York, NY 10285

212-372-7100/800-927-2734

www.bridge.com

Dow Jones Matkets, Inc.*

Harborside Finl Center

600 Plaza Two

Jersey City, NJ 07311

201 -938-4000/800-334-3813

www. dj markets .com

ILX Systems

111 Fulton Street

New York, NY 10038

212-964-1199

www.ibi.com

Quotron

40 E. 52 Street

New York, NY 10022

212-426-4770

Reuters

40 E. 52 Street New York, NY 10022 212-593-5500 www.reuters.com

Telekurs USA Inc. 3 River Bend Center Stamford, CT 06907 1-888-Telekurs www.tkusa.com

Leased line Modem

Leased line Satellite

Leased line Satellite

Leased line Modem

Leased line Satellite

Leased line Modem

Leased line Satellite

Leased

ALL VENDORS OFFER ALL THE FOLLOWING MARKETS:

Stocks

Mutual Funds Bonds

Commodities Options Fututes Indices

Foteign Exchange

*ADP and Dow Jones Markets were purchased by Bridge, yet they maintain their own product line and web sites.