No errors are reported,

How could they be? You're not trying to find or report any. How about:

open(TICKS,"textfile")
   or die "Can't open textfile: $!\n";
[download]

Furthermore, your code is clobbering all but the last line, and printing that. Maybe you want:

my $line_number = 0;
while (<TICKS>) {                   # sic
   print "line $line_number: $_";
   $line_number++;
}
[download]

At least that way you can tell if the file you're reading is the one you expected.

Not trying to come down on you hard, but if you're "having trouble determining what is wrong", make the program tell you!

HTH