Getting technical data through API's

Question

I have a friend who’s blind that does some stock trading. Unfortunately all the technical indicators such as moving average, resistance, and support levels are shown in charts on the major discount brokerage sites as well as most other stock sites. It’s possible to find this information in text form online but as far as I can tell there’s no API to access it, and you have to go to several sites. Are there any discount brokerages that offer an API that can be used to retrieve technical data, which could then be presented in what ever way is most accessible?

Answer 1

I looked at this once a few months ago... both Google and Yahoo (query-string based simple data) offer something for free.

ProgrammableWeb lists a number of APIs many of which are subscription-based.

edit: hmmm, this looks like a duplicate question...

• What online brokers offer APIs?
• Webservice to get stock quotes?
• Stock ticker symbol lookup API
• Free historical intra-day stock data?
• What data source could I use for my stock market program?

(etc.)

Answer 2

I have no answer for your explicit question, but it did raise some interesting philosophical points. Charts are being used as a visual aid in order to help people spot trends over time. How then does a person without sight "visualize" such data and achieve the same trend spotting ability? Is this possible, or is a sight impaired person going to be stuck with receiving a stream of numerical data and having to reconstruct the trends in their memory? Or would it work with some sort of 2d physical "bed of nails" type output device?

Answer 3

There's a bunch of good in-depth financial data in REST API form at http://www.mergent.com/servius