Oh crap! I found a major problem with my excel-based trading system

Turns out that the web query i was using to get the daily data, aggregate it, and then send it to an Access database for storage and complex querying was not using the same OPEN, HIGH, LOW, CLOSE, VOLUME data that is used by the web service (MSN Money's website) that i was using to track the performance of the stocks i was told to buy.

Here's the long and short of it...the OPEN data point i was getting was a calculated value based upon the CLOSE plus/minus the daily change, which is calculated based upon yesterday's CLOSE NOT today's OPEN. Crappy!

That means that the buy signals i was getting, which i wanted to be stocks that gap-opened yesterday and traded on heavy volume, closing near their highs, was not completely true. I was getting more buy signals than I should have been, which explains some of the crappy performances.

I'm getting this fixed and adding in a down-side, balancing trade query...stay tuned...