[maxima]

Originally Posted by Tams »

you better post the question at the TSSupport forum,
they are the authority.

Sorry dont get it - is MultiCharts supported by tradestation?

[Tams]

no

MultiCharts is a different company

you can find the website here:
http://www.tssupport.com

[maxima]

Thank you

(thought TSSupport means Trade Station Support )

[trade-samarai]

Originally Posted by Uli Schmuli »

tradestation has bad data?

(I've been very happy with data quality and success of auto-strategies in tradestation)

Thanks.

Uli

Hi Uli:
In backtesting with tradestation, I have gotten vastly different results before and after deleting my cache. That was running a test on a stock symbol. As the veteran TS user "Goose" says: "The data is always suspect."

I don't know if other data sources are more reliable. Is there a thread on "most reliable data providers" for the different types of securities (stocks, futures, forex, options)? Reliable data is the foundation for everything else.

[Tams]

I guess stupid people do stupid thing... such is life.

[dangermouseb]

I've looked at most packages over the last few years - did an in depth review 2 1/2 years ago for my employer at the time.

NeoTicker (the one I got into most) turned out to be a total dog - slow and cumbersome.
AB keeps crashing one me randomly.
Most software can't backtest scans which given that my first trading system was a scanning system I've pretty much given up on other peoples stuff and I'm writing my own stuff in Excel, VBA, VB6, C++ and possibly Smalltalk MT, and no doubt if I get statisically technical I'll use R and MatLab. (I'd probably use Ninja or OpenQuant as Bots if need be). I also use QCollector to download data almost-realtime.

At least writing the stuff myself I'm not constrained to other peoples ideas, and it does force me to understand my trading systems.

Anyone else using Excel as their main system?

If so does any one have a great way of pulling in history into Excel / code?


--DM

[Tams]

Originally Posted by dangermouseb »

I've looked at most packages over the last few years - did an in depth review 2 1/2 years ago for my employer at the time.

NeoTicker (the one I got into most) turned out to be a total dog - slow and cumbersome.
AB keeps crashing one me randomly.
Most software can't backtest scans which given that my first trading system was a scanning system I've pretty much given up on other peoples stuff and I'm writing my own stuff in Excel, VBA, VB6, C++ and possibly Smalltalk MT, and no doubt if I get statisically technical I'll use R and MatLab. (I'd probably use Ninja or OpenQuant as Bots if need be). I also use QCollector to download data almost-realtime.

At least writing the stuff myself I'm not constrained to other peoples ideas, and it does force me to understand my trading systems.

Anyone else using Excel as their main system?

If so does any one have a great way of pulling in history into Excel / code?


--DM

What software you use depends, to a large degree, is dictated by what instrument you trade and the frequencies of your trades...

Excel has its place in the game... their charting is actually quite good. It will be a surprise to most people that their charting is very capable and very sophisticated.


There is a 3rd party add-on that can easily pull EOD data into Excel... the name escapes me at the moment. I will post it if my Alzheimer improves.

[DugDug]

Dangermouse.
we built a quite intensive excel portfolio backtester. The problem was it takes a long time to run through (45minutes) but the advantage is that you can actually see behind the scenes and also being excel its completely flexible for the user.
The big disadvantage we found was in the data downloading every day became a pain.
Also when building a portfolio testing system you need to ensure the data is all matched up accurately.
We spent a lot of time getting that data as accurate as possible - using futures it was a pain due to the rolling.
What we found now that works far easier is to use the systems that handle data better - eg; esignal, multicharts etc. And run through the signals/alerts . then we get those trades into excel - from there we use excel to really analyse the trades.
Disclaimer - we are not fully automated - while i would like to be, we rather use the indicators to show us possible trades, and we test those for how often they work, what happens when they do and dont work, and then we apply context as a discretionary input.
I am finding Multicharts works pretty well for this - while it does have its issues - its very flexible and it seems the guys there are actively working to be able to link it to excel using more of a cut and paste basis. This would make using their scans great without needing a lot of programming.