 "Very different kind of software but not for everyone" - ronblack | April 10, 2009 2:11 AM |
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APS is not of everyone. I think it is only for people who know how to use various patterns to develop strategies with a higher success rate than each of the individual patterns involved. Those that do not understand what I just said will not find this program useful.
Support is really excellent but they avoid answering questions related to specific issues about trading systems. Understandable but it is kind of disappointing. Also, this is not a neural net program or some other cheap trial-and-error or combinatorial search based pattern finder. It is very fast for what it does and requires minimal input from the user.
Boils down to this: if you do not have the knowledge and experience that is required to use patterns in high probability short term trading systems you won’t find this program very useful. |
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| "Unique product, a white-box, can be useful provided you know the proper way to use it" - trader3cnd | March 29, 2009 11:12 AM |
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This software finds OHLC patterns in historical data based on criteria you specify for the success rate, the number of historical trades, the profit factor and the maximum number of consecutive losers. You also need to specify the exit type but options are limited to percentages or points. The entry is limited to close or open. I would like to have a few more choices like exits based on ATR and number of bars after entry. The scan option can find patterns based on exiting at the close of the following bar and I would like to have that feature in the main search option too. The main search option can find patterns with an optimal filter applied after the formation based on a number of bars.
A unique feature of this program is that it can generate the code of the patterns it finds in native language for Tradestation, Metastock and Wealth-Lab, but also for TeleChart and in pseudo code. In a sense then this is a white-box program.
Finding patterns is a difficult task that this program automates successfully although it does not take advantage of multiple threads and that is a limitation as far as execution speed. The company offers custom solutions to overcome this but they are based on running multiple instances of the program.
The program does not tell which patterns to use and how to develop strategies with them. This is a challenging task for those who use patterns. You can test out_of_sample all the patterns in the results and the program will calculate the new performance parameters. This is a useful feature that can assist users in filtering patterns. I don’t think it is enough though. |
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| "Good stand alone pattern search software. You must have a historical data source to use it." - intradaybill | February 16, 2009 1:47 PM |
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The program works as it is advertized by the company and finds price patterns based on higher level performance criteria. The new version of the program is much improved over previous versions. The most interesting feature is the automatic code generation for Tradestation, Metastock, Wealth-Lab and TeleChart. The program comes with only a few sample data files and the user must find a historical data source. In order to use the program for intraday pattern search data files nust be converted to a special format but there is a tool supplied with the program for doing that. There is also system tracking capability and a few other interesting functions, including a position sizing calculator for fixed fractional risk. |
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Not Recommended
