[v101]

Just wondering if anyone has ever used, The Grail tradestation Strategy Builder?

Their web site is:
http://thegrailsystem.com/grail-trad...stem-frame.htm

Just watned to know if it was any good or if there is any other out there, that is good to look at using?

Thanks;

[v101]

looks like this was an product that was acquired by TS:

tradestation Acquires the “Grail” Walk-Forward and Strategy Builder Technology

Acquisition Brings tradestation’s Industry-Leading Strategy Trading Platform to a New Level, Further Raising the Bar against Competitors and Weaker Imitations

Plantation FL, June 17, 2010 – tradestation today announced its acquisition of the Grail System “walk-forward” and “strategy builder” software technology and business from its inventor, Wouter Oosthuizen, and his company, Technovest (Pty) Limited. The products acquired include Grail Walk-Forward Optimizer, Grail Genetic Optimizer and Grail Computer Assisted Strategy Builder, together with all other products, enhancements and new features currently in development. These products will be seamlessly integrated with tradestation’s award-winning, industry-leading trading strategy design, back-testing and automation platform. Both walk-forward testing and a broad strategy builder offering have been a company priority for tradestation for some time, as the company has long realized that the potential value of its strategy design, back-testing and automation platform could rise dramatically with the addition of these tools to create and optimize back-tested trading strategies.

“The Grail Walk-Forward Optimizer should take tradestation’s strategy back-testing functionality to a new threshold,” said John Bartleman, tradestation Securities’ Vice President of Product Management. “Once fully integrated and rolled-out as part of our tradestation Version 9.0, a major-enhancement release that should be out before year-end, traders will have the ability to test the robustness of their strategies at a whole new level. The Grail’s unique model of ‘Walk Forward’ testing allows the trader to see how the strategy he has tested against a historical time period will perform against various unseen market data metrics and time segments within that back-tested time period. The Grail Walk Forward Optimizer performs this multi-dimensional analysis of the strategy and then concludes with a simple ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ based on the simulated performance results. In other words, if the strategy is going to have a better chance of success in real trading, it must first prove its robustness by passing these rigorous metrics analyses performed by the Grail.

“The Grail’s Strategy Builder,” Bartleman added, “will significantly help traders build new strategies from scratch without the need for custom EasyLanguage® programming. Using genetic algorithms, the trader will have the ability to scan through millions of strategy permutations in a relatively short period, identify those strategies he believes show potential, and then submit them to the Grail Walk-Forward Optimizer to test their robustness.”

“The Grail products all were developed principally with tradestation users in mind,” said Mr. Oosthuizen. “tradestation will be releasing some extremely powerful functionality in its upcoming Version 9.0 release which, in my opinion, not only will dramatically increase the Grail’s speed and value, but will take tradestation to a rarefied position where the barrier of entry for a competitor seems insurmountable. Teaming up with tradestation, and having the value of its impressive product development and user support resources and expertise, should take the Grail technology to a whole new level as well.”

Mr. Oosthuizen will be joining the company full-time at its Florida headquarters on October 1, under a three-year employment agreement, to help lead the efforts to enhance the technology and seamlessly integrate it with the tradestation platform. The parties have already started working together to achieve these goals. The purchase was made by tradestation Technologies, Inc., the trading software development subsidiary of tradestation Group, Inc. (NASDAQ GS: TRAD) which develops and owns tradestation’s proprietary software, technology and intellectual property.

About tradestation Group, Inc.

tradestation Group, Inc. (NASDAQ GS: TRAD), through its principal operating subsidiary, tradestation Securities, Inc., offers the tradestation platform to the active trader and certain institutional trader markets. tradestation is an electronic trading platform that offers state-of-the-art electronic order execution and enables clients to design, test, optimize, monitor and automate their own custom Equities, Options, Futures and Forex trading strategies.

tradestation Securities, Inc. (Member NYSE, FINRA, SIPC, DTCC, OCC & NFA) is a licensed securities broker-dealer and a registered futures commission merchant, and also a member of the Boston Options Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange, Chicago Stock Exchange, International Securities Exchange and NASDAQ OMX. Its tradestation Prime Services division, based in New York, seeks to provide prime brokerage services to small and mid-sized hedge funds and other firms. The company’s technology subsidiary, tradestation Technologies, Inc., develops and offers strategy trading software tools and subscription services. Its London-based subsidiary, tradestation Europe Limited, an FSA-authorized brokerage firm, introduces UK and other European accounts to tradestation Securities.

Forward-Looking Statements – Issues, Uncertainties and Risk Factors

This press release contains statements that are forward-looking and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used in this press release, the words “potential,” “should,” “could,” “upcoming,” “will,” “going to have a better chance of success,” and similar expressions, if and to the extent used, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are based largely on current expectations and beliefs concerning future events that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results herein suggested. Factors that may cause or contribute to the potential differences include, but are not limited to, (i) tradestation’s success in integrating the Grail technology with the tradestation platform in a timely manner, and in a manner that increases the quality, value and usability of the Grail technology with tradestation, and produces an enhanced set of features which customers who back-test strategies will find highly valuable and worth paying for, (ii) the ability of tradestation to release tradestation Version 9 and its updates as currently planned and tradestation’s customer base and market finding the improvements in Version 9 as valuable as tradestation believes they will, and (iii) to what extent the walk-forward technology will, in real-time application and trading, have validated trading strategies that are more likely to succeed.

[Tams]

Originally Posted by v101 »

Just wondering if anyone has ever used, The Grail tradestation Strategy Builder?

Their web site is:
THE GRAIL Global Trading System / Genetic Trading Systems

Just watned to know if it was any good or if there is any other out there, that is good to look at using?

Thanks;

just before the guy was bought out by tradestation, in one of the messages on his website forum, he said he had only one old computer and could not afford to buy a newer and more powerful computer to test his system.

oh well.

[bakrob99]

Originally Posted by Tams »

just before the guy was bought out by tradestation, in one of the messages on his website forum, he said he had only one old computer and could not afford to buy a newer and more powerful computer to test his system.

oh well.

Tams - that is just BS. Please substantiate your post by showing the link to you quote. If you know anything about The Grail system you'll know that it is a very good system for walking your automated strategies forward and providing insight as to their likelihood of maintaining robuistness in the future market.

It is not an automate stratgey - nor wa sit ever intneded to be. The developer is a software developer and not a trader.

bakrob99

[electroniclocal]

It's the best retail WFO analysis tool out there, IMO. Lots of great testing and it can save a huge amount of effort. The only downside is that the tradestation Optimisation process that is a prerequisite to running WFO is very, very, very slow compared to MultiCharts.

The South African guy who built it is working for TS in its integration into TS. The WFO presents a number of solutions and allows the user to look into them and choose which to use. Part of the results is a five point test that analyses each reported iteration and gives each test a PASS/FAIL and the overall iteration a PASS/FAIL.

Great stuff. Highly recommended to algo designers.

EL

[Tams]

Originally Posted by bakrob99 »

Tams - that is just BS. Please substantiate your post by showing the link to you quote. If you know anything about The Grail system you'll know that it is a very good system for walking your automated strategies forward and providing insight as to their likelihood of maintaining robuistness in the future market.

It is not an automate stratgey - nor wa sit ever intneded to be. The developer is a software developer and not a trader.

bakrob99

did I say it is not good? (or good?)



if the old forum is still there, you can go check it out.

[bakrob99]

Originally Posted by Tams »

did I say it is not good? (or good?)



if the old forum is still there, you can go check it out.

You're implication was clear. You should be prepared to stand by your comments. It's not up to me to support your statements.