Data Problem: GC -- CSI Data?

[Algonquin]

I am using CSI data with the standard default settings. I was examining historical gold prices, and noticed that the high historical price is being shown as $1644 on 01/21/80. Even given the price distortions which occur with continuous back-adjusted data, this number seems way off, especially when I compare to the distortions in silver (SI). I would appreciate knowing what other users are showing. Many thanks.

[RedRock]

1573.80 For entertainment purposes only.... Back-adjusting, in design, yields past data prices meaningless for contemporary comparison. Its the 'price' we pay to have current price match to market. The roll parameters we selected account for our different price on that date.

Comex GCJ80 19800121 showed a high and Open of 895.00 L845.00 C861.00

Adjusted for inflation would be an interesting chart...

[sluggo]

Algonquin, if you want to see price distortions, have a look at your backadjusted continuous contract for Crude Oil or High Grade Copper. They didn't just give it away, oh no, they paid you to take the product off their hands! Cowabunga.

[Roger Rines]

CSI allows users to create a historical data stream without any adjustments. In the late 1980 through to the mid 1990 period when paper charts were still popular these type of contract files were named Continuation files, versus Continuous files for data that was Back-Adjusted.

To create this kind of series in Unfair Advantage, select the "Nth Nearest" option and use the "Strictly By Days Before Expiration" option setting if you want to emulate the image below. I used 1-day before expiration.

Unfair Advantage also allows users to append the unadjusted Close value to each data record in a Back-Adjusted contract should you want to know the adjustment offset from actual market results for each day included in the Back-Adjusted file. Trading Blox will support this field, but I've never found a way for a program like Trade Station to access that field, even though it will load more than the typical 7-field, six comma ASCII files that contain an un-adjusted close field.

To get back to your question, I've captured the entire Gold History in an Un-Adjusted Continuation file and compressed the display to Monthly data in a TradeStation 2000i chart so you can get a sense of how much adjustment can accumulate over time. In the chart below, recent history also contains the electronic session, but that didn't exist in the period you were asking about.

Unfair Advantage also provides CASH Gold data, but when that data in overlaid over the futures data, the peak prices fall inside the future's contract range. I don't show that, but that would be an easy task if that would be helpful.

[Algonquin]

Great comments. Many thanks to all!