Registered: Jul 2012
Posts: 22

Right now I use Excel/VBA to do all my backtesting. I'm looking to expand one of my systems (100+ trades per day) and I'm thinking either R or MATLAB would be a better tool for the job (mostly research/backtesting, possibly execution down the road).

Does anyone have experience with BOTH of these options, and a preference for either? I realize R is free and MATLAB costs 2k+, which isn't really a concern. I'm just looking to get started with a solution that I'll stick with.

Registered: Jul 2012
Posts: 22

...or if there are better platforms I'd be interested in hearing about those as well.

Registered: Nov 2006
Posts: 1818

R
About only advantage to matlab is some signal processing support-- but, R has huge support and development behind it as well as financial libraries available.

Registered: Aug 2011
Posts: 7

If you want a IDE environment like Matlab and are willing to spend money, I can also advise you to look into Mathematica. I find its symbolic math, programming and graphics (plotting) possibilities way better than Matlab. Matlab is however known to be a little quicker on numbers, you can google for benchmarks.

As another interpreted language you can also try Python. It might be the easiest, yet very powerful language. There are excellent libraries available.

There's no real difference in possibilities anyways. It all depends on your preferences and habits. I'm biased towards both Python and Mathematica because I know they integrate quite easy with C++/C#. But this might also be true for R and Matlab.

Registered: Jul 2012
Posts: 22

I found some insight on this topic on nuclearphynance, although some of the R critiques were many years old. Curious if things are different here in 2012. I guess the main factors I'm interested in are:
- computational speed
- development time
- integration with Excel/VBA

Registered: Jul 2011
Posts: 3684

---

Quote from a-greenwell:

I found some insight on this topic on nuclearphynance, although some of the R critiques were many years old. Curious if things are different here in 2012. I guess the main factors I'm interested in are:
- computational speed
- development time
- integration with Excel/VBA

---

Advantage Futures

Futures Brokerage & Clearing

AMP Global Clearing

Futures and FX Trading

Bright Trading

Professional Equities Trading

CTS

Futures Trading Software

DaytradingBias.com

Professional Trading Analytics

ECHOtrade

Professional Trading Firm

eSignal

Trading Software Provider

FXCM

Forex Trading Services

Global Futures

Futures, Options & FX Trading

Interactive Brokers

Pro Gateway to World Markets

JC Trading Group

Direct Access Trading

MB Trading

Direct Access Trading

MultiCharts

Trading Software Provider

NinjaTrader

Trading Software Provider

OANDA

Currency Trading

optionshouse

Option Trading & Education

Rithmic

Futures Trade Execution Platform

SpeedTrader

Direct Access Trading

SpreadProfessor

Spread Trading Instruction

thinkorswim by TD Ameritrade

Direct Access Trading

TradersStudio

System Building & Backtesting

Trading Technologies

Trading Software Provider

Trend Following

Trading Systems Provider