Backtesting software

It is extremely difficult to find good backtesting software that is not very expensive and does not bind you to open a brokerage account (like Tradestation).

It would be interesting to discuss pros and cons of different software. Does anybody know of a reliable and not too expensive software that can use different kinds of data feeds and allows you to create fairly elaborate trading systems? Am I asking too much?

 

Wealth Lab

www.wealth-lab.com

 

I have used metaStock for years (with eSignal) http://www.metastock.com. Do a search on metastock for several threads on metastock and it's pros and cons.

I'm in the process of switching to Wealth-lab, due to the much better programming and testing capabilities.

 

Vishnu,

Do you know:
if wealth-lab works on intraday data?
if they have a source for historical data?
if they can run strategies across many symbols at a time?

 

They can run on intraday data (Qfeed/Qcharts). They have historical data from a variety of sources. And you can test on baskets of symbols.

 

Do they have a source for historical INTRADAY data? That always seems to be a sticking point with various software.

 

Qfeed. Maybe others as well but I use Qfeed for historical intraday data. For instance, I just loaded up a year's worth of five minute data on about 30 Nasdaq stocks in order to do some backtesting.

 

Can you have multiple time series in a strategy?

For example, use intraday charts, but be able to look at the daily chart for the last 20 days average true range so you can see if you've had a H-L difference on the intraday chart that exceeds it?

 

Yes. But check it out. All the answers are at www.wealth-lab.com.

I have no involvement with the site or product. I just use it a lot.

 

I use Tradestation 2000 right now. It's OK and I've got it doing a lot of what I want. I wouldn't mind something better, but I don't look forward to ramping up on learning the idosynchrasies of another product.

I looked at wealth-lab a few months ago, but didn't look into it too fully as I didn't have the time to more thoroughly investigate it. I'll check it out again. Thx for your input.