Question: different or additional data providers

[isteven]

Hello @virattt, hope you're doing well. Great work on Dexter, it helps us laypeople in analyzing financial data & making investment decisions.

This probably has been brought up before, but may I know if you think it's a good idea to have the ability to choose different data providers?

The reasons:

1. Pricing. Some providers have trial price bracket, often at $0. Helpful during development.
2. Different details/data slice that may somewhat help the model.
3. Regional coverage.

Screenshots of what I'm currently dabbling:

Do let us know your thoughts on this, cheers!

[virattt]

Hey @isteven, for the core repo, we’re going to stick with Financial Datasets as the supported provider.

With financial agents, data quality is everything. We’ve seen gaps and inconsistencies across many free or lower cost APIs, and when the data is off, the Dexter's output is off. Since we own and maintain FD, we can fix issues quickly and keep Dexter consistent. We can’t do that with third party providers we don’t control.

That said, the code is intentionally extensible. If you want to fork and wire in yfinance, Alpha Vantage, FMP, etc. for your own setup, that’s totally fair and should be straightforward to do.

I'll leave this issue open so other folks have context, as well.

[isteven]

Hi @virattt,

when the data is off, the Dexter's output is off

Understood. I think I'll create a separate fork for those who are willing to take some trade-offs between data availability VS data quality.

Since we own and maintain FD

Thanks for the transparency, appreciate it. This indeed provides background context & now we understand the underlying reason :)

[virattt]

I think I'll create a separate fork for those who are willing to take some trade-offs between data availability VS data quality.

Yep, there are a few forks out there already that use yfinance, etc. Your research quality / mileage may vary though.

Thanks for the transparency, appreciate it.

Yep, it's a known fact that I'm the creator of Dexter and the founder of Financial Datasets. Building both in tandem!