Lab: Build Your First AmiBroker Workspace

Everything in this part so far has been separate: an installation, a database concept, an importer, a category system, a set of chart controls. This lab joins them into one thing — an environment you open, work in, and close again, and which is still there tomorrow.

Budget fifty minutes and do it in one sitting. Roughly fifteen minutes go on the database and the import, twenty on the charts and sheets, and the rest on watch lists, the layout and verification. The result is the workspace the rest of the course assumes you have.

What you are building, and the order you build it in

build from the bottom up

1. Saved layout — "Course"Windows, symbols, intervals, sheets. Step 6
2. Three chart sheets — Price, Trend, ScratchPanes and formulas. Steps 4 and 5
3. Two watch lists — Course universe, Data problemsStep 3
4. Imported symbols with verified dataStep 2
5. Database — end-of-day base intervalStep 1chosen once

Before you start

• AmiBroker installed and verified, and your setup record from the first lab open in a text editor.
• Either AmiQuote working, or a folder of CSV files with daily OHLCV data for a handful of instruments. Either route is fine and the lab covers both.
• A decision about where the database folder goes. Somewhere you back up, outside C:\Program Files.

!Important

Leave the sample DJIA database alone. You want an untouched known-good database to compare against when something you build behaves oddly, and a demonstration dataset is exactly the wrong thing to build a course’s worth of work on top of.

Step 1 — Create and configure the database

▷Exercise

1. File -> New -> Database.
2. Press Browse... and choose a parent folder, then type a folder name that says what the database is and what its interval is — amibroker-course-eod is a reasonable choice. You are naming a folder that does not exist yet; AmiBroker creates it.
3. Press Create. The lower half of the dialog becomes usable only now.
4. Set Data source to (local).
5. Leave Local data storage and Number of bars to load as they are. On a local database both are inert, and knowing that is worth more than any value you could type.
6. Set Base time interval to End-of-day (daily).
7. Press OK.

=Expected result

The title bar or the window changes to reflect the new database, and the symbol tree is empty except for the built-in category leaves. An empty symbol list at this point is correct — you have a database with no symbols in it.

Then, immediately, before you forget:

▷Exercise

Open your setup record and fill in the database line: the full folder path, and the base interval you just chose. If you later create an intraday database for Part 19, add a second line then. You will not remember which is which in three months, and the base interval is not visible from outside the folder.

⚠Warning

Take the base-interval choice seriously even though end-of-day is the obvious answer here. It sets the finest bar this database can ever hold. Changing the setting later does not retroactively create intraday history that was never stored — the documented route to a finer grain is a new database and a fresh import. This is the deliberately irreversible decision in this lab.

Step 2 — Import a starter universe

Aim for twenty to forty symbols, not two thousand. A universe small enough to inspect by eye is a universe whose defects you will actually notice, and every technique in Parts 4 through 16 works identically at either scale. Part 12 covers scaling up.

Choose instruments you can say something about: a broad index, a handful of large, liquid stocks from different sectors, and — if you have them — an instrument or two from outside equities, so that later lessons about volume, gaps and sessions have something to contrast against.

Route A: AmiQuote

▷Exercise

1. Write a .TLS ticker list in a plain text editor: one symbol per line, saved with the .TLS extension. Remember the exchange suffixes for non-US symbols.
2. With AmiBroker running and your new database open, launch AmiQuote and open the list with File -> Open.
3. Choose the data source, set the date range to start well before you need — ten years is ample for this course — and confirm the Automatic import checkbox is ticked.
4. Start the download. Only marked tickers download; Edit -> Mark all if in doubt.
5. When it finishes, switch to AmiBroker. The symbols should be in the tree.

Route B: the Import Wizard

▷Exercise

1. File -> Import Wizard.
2. Step 1: Pick files and select your CSVs, multi-selecting with Ctrl or Shift.
3. Step 2: map each column, set the correct Separator, set Skip lines to 1 if your files have a header row, and tick Automatically add new symbols — without it, nothing is created.
4. Step 3: tick Add current settings to ASCII importer definitions and fill in the description, file mask and format file name, so you never have to map those columns again.
5. Finish.

Verify before you go further

▷Exercise

Run import-health-check.afl from the importing lesson as an exploration, with Apply to = All symbols and Range = All quotations. Read every row.

=Expected result

Bar counts in the same order of magnitude for symbols with similar listing histories. First and last bar dates that make sense. Zero in the OHLC errors and non-positive columns for essentially everything. Largest-move figures that are plausible for the instrument, with any large ones explainable by a split.

Then open two or three symbols on a chart and look. View -> Zoom -> All, then scroll back. A chart is a fast defect detector for anything the numeric checks did not think to ask about — a flat section where a symbol stopped trading, a step change where an adjustment was applied to part of the history only.

✕Common mistake

Do not proceed with symbols you know are wrong. Every subsequent part of this course builds on this data, and a defect you tolerate now becomes an inexplicable result in Part 28. Either fix the import, or move the symbol into the “Data problems” watch list you are about to create and exclude it deliberately.

Step 3 — Create the watch lists

▷Exercise

1. Symbol -> Watch List -> New Watchlist. Name it Course universe.
2. Create a second one called Data problems.
3. Populate the first. The quickest route for a batch is Symbol -> Watch List -> Type-in Symbols, which expects comma-separated symbols. For individual symbols, right-click in the symbol tree and use Watch List -> Add Selected Symbol; hold Ctrl in the selector to add one symbol to several lists at once.
4. Put anything the health check flagged into Data problems rather than deleting it.
5. Confirm both lists appear under the “Watch lists” leaf of the symbol tree, with the right members in each.

✦Tip

Watch lists are plain .TLS text files inside a Watchlists folder in the database, with an index.txt defining their order. If you already have your universe as a text file, you can drop it into that folder as a .tls and AmiBroker adds it to index.txt automatically. The same file can be opened directly in AmiQuote — so the list you scan and the list you download can be literally the same file.

Write both names into your setup record. Names, not numbers — watch list numbers are ordinal positions that move if the lists are reordered.

Step 4 — The chart formula

Goal

You need a price pane that works on all three of the sheets you are about to build, on daily and weekly intervals, without editing it in between. That means every number in it has to be adjustable from the Parameters dialog rather than hard-coded, and the title has to say which interval you are looking at — because in a layout with several windows open, reading a weekly chart while believing it is daily is the easiest mistake in AmiBroker to make and the hardest to notice.

The formula

Complete runnable AFL

price-with-context.afl

// ===========================================================================
//  Price with context
//  A price pane that always tells you what you are looking at: which symbol,
//  which interval, which bar, and where price sits relative to two averages.
//  Written for the "Build Your First AmiBroker Workspace" lab in Part 3.
//
//  HOW TO USE IT
//    Analysis -> Formula Editor, paste, type a name into the Formula Name
//    field, Save, then press Apply indicator to put it on the current chart.
//    Right-click the pane -> Parameters to change the averages.
//
//  WHY THE PARAMETERS EXIST
//    The same formula has to serve a weekly sheet, a daily sheet and, later,
//    an intraday sheet. Hard-coding 50 and 200 would make it a daily formula
//    wearing a general name. Every number a reader might want to change is a
//    Param() at the top instead of a literal buried in an expression.
//
//  WHAT IT DOES NOT DO
//    It plots two averages. It does not generate signals, and a moving average
//    is a transformation of past prices, not a forecast of future ones. Nothing
//    here should be read as a reason to trade.
// ===========================================================================

_SECTION_BEGIN( "Price with context" );

FastPeriods  = Param( "Fast average periods", 50, 2, 300, 1 );
SlowPeriods  = Param( "Slow average periods", 200, 5, 500, 1 );
ShowAverages = ParamToggle( "Show averages", "No|Yes", 1 );

FastAverage = MA( Close, FastPeriods );
SlowAverage = MA( Close, SlowPeriods );

// styleCandle is the default rather than the only option, so the same pane can
// be switched to bars or a line from the Parameters dialog without editing code.
Plot( Close, "Price", colorDefault, ParamStyle( "Price style", styleCandle ) );

if ( ShowAverages )
{
    Plot( FastAverage, "MA " + NumToStr( FastPeriods, 1.0 ),
          colorBlue, styleLine );
    Plot( SlowAverage, "MA " + NumToStr( SlowPeriods, 1.0 ),
          colorRed, styleLine | styleThick );
}

// The title states the interval explicitly. Reading a weekly chart while
// believing it is daily is the single easiest mistake to make in a workspace
// with several linked windows open at once.
Title = Name() + "  -  " + FullName() + "\n"
      + Interval( 2 ) + "  -  " + Date() + "\n"
      + "Open " + NumToStr( Open, 1.2 )
      + "   High " + NumToStr( High, 1.2 )
      + "   Low " + NumToStr( Low, 1.2 )
      + "   Close " + NumToStr( Close, 1.2 )
      + "   Volume " + NumToStr( Volume, 1.0 );

_SECTION_END();

_SECTION_BEGIN( "Volume" );

// Volume lives in its own scale. Without styleOwnScale it would be drawn
// against the price axis and collapse into a flat line along the bottom -
// the most common surprise when a second plot joins a price pane.
Plot( Volume, "Volume", colorLightGrey, styleHistogram | styleOwnScale );

_SECTION_END();

Download price-with-context.afl65 lines

How it works

A parameter block at the top, then everything else. Three Param calls declare the fast and slow average lengths and a toggle for whether the averages are drawn at all. Nothing below that block contains a literal number that a reader might want to change. That is a convention, not a requirement, and it is the single most useful habit in AFL chart formulas.

The price plot takes its style from a parameter too. ParamStyle("Price style", styleCandle) makes candlesticks the default while leaving bars and lines a dialog choice away. Hard-coding styleCandle would work; it would just mean editing the file to change your mind.

The averages are drawn inside a conditional. if (ShowAverages) skips both Plot calls when the toggle is off, so the pane can be reduced to bare price for a screenshot or a clean look without removing anything.

The title states the context explicitly. Symbol, full name, interval by name, the selected date, and the four prices plus volume. Interval(2) returns the interval as a string, which is what makes the interval visible rather than inferred.

Volume gets its own section and its own scale. A second _SECTION_BEGIN block plots volume as a histogram with styleOwnScale. Without that style, volume in the millions drawn against a price axis running from twenty to four hundred collapses into a flat line along the bottom — the classic surprise when a second plot with a different range joins a pane.

Key functions

Function	What it gives you
Param(name, default, min, max, step)	A numeric value editable from the Parameters dialog
ParamToggle(name, "No|Yes", default)	A Yes/No parameter, returned as 1 or 0
ParamStyle(name, defaultStyle)	A style chooser in the dialog, returned as a style value
_SECTION_BEGIN(name) / _SECTION_END()	Delimits a code section and namespaces its parameters
Interval(2)	The current interval as a readable string
NumToStr(value, format)	Formats a number for concatenation into a title
styleOwnScale	Draws a plot against its own independent Y scale

!Important

Never delete _SECTION_BEGIN and _SECTION_END from a chart formula. They let AmiBroker identify and modify code sections through the drag-and-drop interface, and they namespace the parameters — two sections can each have a “Periods” parameter only because their section names differ. AmiBroker auto-numbers duplicate section names, so a second section called “MA” becomes “MA1”.

Expected result

=Expected result

A candlestick price chart with a blue fast average and a thicker red slow average over it, a volume histogram in the same pane drawn on its own scale, and a three-line title naming the symbol, its full name, the interval, the selected date and that bar’s OHLC and volume.

Right-clicking the pane and choosing Parameters shows five entries — the two average lengths, the show-averages toggle, and the price style — grouped under the section names.

Test it

1. Change Fast average periods from 50 to 5 in the Parameters dialog. The blue line should immediately hug the price much more closely. If nothing changes, you are editing the parameters of a different pane.
2. Switch the chart to Weekly. The title’s interval field must change to “Weekly”, and both averages must recompute over weekly bars — the slow average will cover a far longer span of calendar time for the same period count. This is the check that proves the title is reporting rather than guessing.
3. Set Show averages to No. Both lines disappear; price and volume remain.

Common errors

Symptom	Cause
The formula does not appear in the Charts tree	It was not saved into the Formulas folder; run View -> Refresh All after saving there
Volume is a flat line along the bottom	styleOwnScale was removed from the volume plot
Parameters dialog shows entries you do not recognise	You opened Parameters from the context menu, which shows every section in the pane
Changing a parameter has no visible effect	A different pane is selected, or the parameter belongs to another section
The title shows the last visible bar rather than the one you clicked	Quote selection is off, or Quote selection only by CTRL+LMB is enabled in Preferences

Extension

Add a third, much slower average and a ParamColor call so its colour is a dialog choice too. Then ask a harder question: with three averages on the chart, is the chart telling you anything that the two-average version did not? Being able to answer “no, and I will remove it” is a skill this course returns to repeatedly.

Step 5 — Build the three chart sheets

Sheets are the tabs along the bottom of the chart window. A default installation ships with four; you are going to use three of them and name them.

▷Exercise

1. Save price-with-context.afl into the Formulas subfolder of the main AmiBroker directory — the Formula Name field on the editor toolbar sets the name it saves under — then run View -> Refresh All so it appears in Window -> Charts.
2. Right-click the first sheet tab and rename it Price. Put the price formula on it with Apply indicator, or by double-clicking it in the Charts tree.
3. Right-click the second sheet tab and rename it Trend. Put the price formula on it too, then open its Parameters and set the averages to something longer — 100 and 200 is a reasonable starting pair for a daily chart.
4. Right-click the third sheet tab and rename it Scratch. Leave it empty, or put a single bare price pane on it. This is where you will try things during later parts without disturbing the two sheets you rely on.
5. Click between the three tabs. Each should show its own arrangement, and the parameters you set on Trend should not have followed you to Price.

=Expected result

Three named tabs at the bottom of the window, and switching between them changes the panes instantly with no redraw delay worth noticing. The two price sheets show the same formula with different parameter values — which is the point: a chart pane stores its own parameter values, so one formula can serve several configurations.

✕Common mistake

If the rename did not stick, you renamed the wrong row of tabs. The row along the top is MDI tabs, auto-named from the document, and they cannot be renamed. Sheet tabs are along the bottom, below the scroll bar.

If you need more than four sheets later, the count is set on the Charting tab of Tools -> Preferences — and that particular setting takes effect only after restarting AmiBroker, which is why raising it appears to do nothing.

Once the three sheets are as you want them, make the set permanent: right-click the chart and choose Template -> Save as default. New windows will then start from this arrangement rather than from AmiBroker’s factory default.

Step 6 — Arrange the windows and save the layout

▷Exercise

1. File -> New -> Default Chart to open a second chart window. Set it to Weekly. Leave the first on Daily.
2. Link them by symbol but not by interval: click the S button on the left of the scroll bar in each window and choose the same colour. Leave both I buttons grey.
3. Test the link: click a different symbol in the tree. Both windows should follow. Change the interval in one; the other must not change.
4. Arrange the two windows the way you want them — side by side is a good default. If you have a second monitor, use Window -> Floating on one of them and move it across.
5. Window -> Layouts, right-click in the Layouts pane, choose Save As, and name the layout Course.
6. Tools -> Preferences, Miscellaneous tab, and confirm Save on exit: Layouts is on.

=Expected result

A named layout in the Layouts pane. Double-clicking it restores the arrangement — two windows, one daily and one weekly, symbol-linked, on whichever symbol the layout was saved with.

!Important

The S and I link buttons are independent, and that is the entire point of them. Symbol linking without interval linking gives you a multi-timeframe view of one instrument that follows you around the database. Grey means no link; any other colour puts that window into that colour-coded link group.

If a chart later “refuses to change symbol”, check the padlock button on the right of the scroll bar. A symbol-locked chart silently ignores clicks in the tree until the lock is released.

✕Common mistake

Layouts saved as local are per-database and invisible from other databases; global layouts are visible everywhere. If your “Course” layout is not in the list after you switch to another database, that is the local/global distinction working as designed, not a lost layout.

Step 7 — Prove it survives

▷Exercise

Close AmiBroker completely. Reopen it. Load the Course layout if it did not load itself. Everything should be as you left it.

This is the only test of this lab that matters, because it is the one that fails. An arrangement that vanishes on close is the most common complaint about AmiBroker’s interface, and it has two causes, both of which you have now dealt with: Save on exit: Layouts being off, and never having saved a named layout in the first place.

Verification checklist

Where the workspace can fail, and what proves it did not

1. 1The databaseIt exists, at a path you recorded, with an end-of-day base interval
2. 2The dataThe health check runs clean, and charts look like markets
3. 3The universeTwo watch lists exist and have the right members
4. 4The sheetsThree named tabs, each with its own arrangement
5. 5The layoutNamed, saved, and still there after a restart

• File -> Database Settings shows your database with data source (local) and an end-of-day base time interval.
• The symbol tree contains the symbols you imported, and no others you did not intend.
• import-health-check.afl returns one row per symbol with no unexplained OHLC errors or non-positive prices.
• At least three symbols have been opened on a chart and looked at with View -> Zoom -> All.
• Course universe and Data problems exist under the Watch lists leaf, with the right members in each.
• universe-audit.afl runs against Course universe and reports the membership you expect.
• Three sheet tabs named Price, Trend and Scratch, each with its own arrangement.
• The Price and Trend sheets use the same formula with different parameter values.
• Two chart windows, one daily and one weekly, symbol-linked and not interval-linked.
• A layout named Course in the Layouts pane.
• AmiBroker has been closed and reopened, and the workspace came back.
• Your setup record names the database path, the base interval, and the two watch lists.

Any unchecked box is worth fixing now. The workspace is a dependency of everything that follows, and the cost of fixing it here is minutes.

Where this goes next

Part 4 starts reading price charts, and it assumes the chart window you just built. Part 12 runs scans and explorations, and it assumes the Course universe watch list, so that “Apply to = Filter” has something meaningful to point at. Part 19 creates a second database with an intraday base interval — deliberately separate from this one, for the reasons the base-interval lesson set out.

Add to the workspace as you go, but keep the discipline: watch lists for anything that changes, one sheet you can safely experiment on, and a layout saved under a name rather than trusted to the automatic save.

What changed in your understanding

You have an environment rather than an installation. More importantly, you have built each layer of it knowing what the layer below constrains: the base interval limits the charts, the import determines what the analysis can see, the watch lists determine what a scan runs over, and the layout is the only thing that remembers where you put it all.

You have also seen a single formula serve two configurations through its Parameters dialog, which is the first appearance of an idea the whole of Part 10 is built on — that a formula with its variables exposed is a tool, and a formula with them hard-coded is a single-use answer.

Check your understanding

Question 1. You put the same chart formula on the Price sheet and the Trend sheet, then change the average lengths on Trend. What happens to Price?

• It changes too — the formula is shared
• Nothing — each pane stores its own parameter values
• It shows an error until you reapply the formula
• The change applies after AmiBroker restarts

Show the answer and why

Answer: Nothing — each pane stores its own parameter values

Parameter values are stored per chart pane, not in the formula file, which is why one formula can serve several configurations. That separation is what makes a heavily parameterised formula worth writing in the first place.

Question 2. You linked two chart windows with the S button but left both I buttons grey. What behaviour does that give you?

• Both windows change symbol together, and each keeps its own interval
• Both windows change interval together, and each keeps its own symbol
• Neither window can change symbol
• The windows are linked only while both are visible

Show the answer and why

Answer: Both windows change symbol together, and each keeps its own interval

S links the symbol, I links the interval, and they are independent. Symbol-linked and interval-unlinked is exactly the multi-timeframe arrangement this lab builds: one instrument, two horizons, following you around the database together.

Question 3. Which of these would cause your carefully arranged workspace to be gone tomorrow? Select all that apply.

• Never saving a named layout
• "Save on exit: Layouts" being off in Preferences
• Saving a local layout and then opening a different database
• Renaming a chart sheet tab

Show the answer and why

Answer: Never saving a named layout, "Save on exit: Layouts" being off in Preferences, Saving a local layout and then opening a different database

The first two lose the arrangement outright; the third does not lose it but makes it invisible, because local layouts are per-database. Renaming a sheet tab is harmless. Together the three explain almost every report of AmiBroker "not remembering" a workspace.

Question 4. Six months from now you want intraday charts. What is the documented route?

• Change the base time interval on this database and re-import
• Create a new database with an intraday base interval and import into it
• Buy the Professional edition
• Enable Local data storage in Database Settings

Show the answer and why

Answer: Create a new database with an intraday base interval and import into it

Changing the setting on an existing database does not create intraday history that was never stored — bars already compressed to daily cannot be un-compressed. The documented approach is a second database with the finer base interval, which is also why this lab makes you record the base interval of every database you create.

Check my answersClear