It sounds like perhaps the problem you're running into is that you can not have more than one indicator with the same name. So you need to rename the indicator before dragging another one on. This will be fixed in the next beta release. If you already have an indicator named "Simple Moving Average", and you drag another one, it will name it "Simple Moving Average (2)". I hope that helps.
So how do most people run programs. Do they only run it on one stock at a time or are there any ways to run baskets or market wide scans. The ideas that i had would first require a scan of the market for specific conditions, say, stocks between $50-100, over 1mil avg vol, gapping up 2 points and then there would be specific entry and exit criteria. Are there any programs out there that can do this??
Also, is there any program that lets you have a trigger of lets say a 30 min ma cross and an entry based on a shorter time frame? Like next red 15 min candle after 30 min cross???
TradeStation lets you do almost any imaginable real time scanning (though I think there is a limit of 1,000 symbols at a time), and it can automate your trading, entries and exits (you don't even need to program a strategy, you can use macros and OCO/OSO orders for straight forward cases). What it cannot do (there might be some third party add-ons for this though) is BACKTEST a portfolio of stocks. You need to backtest them one by one, and then aggregate the data for all. As for having an entry triggered on a time frame, and executed on a different time frame, is indeed possible in TradeStation, using graph windows with multiple data streams. I talk about TradeStation because this is what I use, there might be other similar platforms out there.
I am doing a ton of backtesting in TradeStation, and it is indeed on a per-stock basis. However, the level of detail you get for the strategy results is incredible. You can see every trade, net profits short and long (of course), the percent of time in the market, various ratios, equity curve, and a ton more. In my limited experience, I would not be very comfortable running an automated strategy on a stock that popped out of a scan. It takes a lot of work to determine if a stock is really good for a strategy - some symbols are great and others are strategy killers. Also, I am not sure TradeStation would allow automating a scan output because they require you to click an authorization every time you disable confirmation for an automated strategy/chart combination. It might be possible, but it is not anything I have seen. Good luck, Chabah
Just read that Ameritrade has acquired a platform called "stock watch pro" Is any one familiar with this platform. supposedly it has backtesting and automation capabilities.