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Re:Ask HN: Need help with correlation [Finance] by tshtf on Saturday November 27, 2010 @04:28PM (#1945929)
It can be a good approach. Make sure you have a good source of historic price data to come up with the best strategies.
Re:Ask HN: Need help with correlation [Finance] by astroguy on Saturday November 27, 2010 @04:38PM (#1945951)
I was thinking to grab the data either from Yahoo finance or Google finance. If I remember right, it allows me to get data from past 5 years only. Do you have recommendation for any other resource?
Re:Ask HN: Need help with correlation [Finance] by chrisaycock on Saturday November 27, 2010 @04:58PM (#1945983)
Yahoo and Google are your best bets for historical prices. Just use the adjusted closing price (not the open or unadjusted prices).

Also, what you call a key area is referred to as a "sector" in investing. There are many ETF managers that try to track the various sectors, though your easiest bet might be the Sector SPDRs. Their webpage already has a correlation tool if you just want to use theirs:

http://www.sectorspdr.com/correlation/

Simply enter one of their ETFs (eg. "XLF") and look at the correlation of the other Sector SPDRs.

Re:Ask HN: Need help with correlation [Finance] by astroguy on Saturday November 27, 2010 @05:24PM (#1946040)
Thank you for the link. From your experience did you notice any immediate correlation between the sectors or any time delay? If there is some time delay, it might be a key feature to notice for short term trading, sounds right?
Re:Ask HN: Need help with correlation [Finance] by chrisaycock on Saturday November 27, 2010 @05:35PM (#1946067)
Um, what you're referring to is a form of high-frequency trading. For that you'll need (1) a direct connection to the exchange, and possibly even co-location; (2) historical tick data for backtesting; and (3) the hardware and software capable of executing the logic. The kinds of time-sensitive arbitrage opportunities you're hinting at take a TON of skill and start-up capital to perform.

Basically, if you haven't done this kind of stuff before, this not the type of strategy you should start with.