so I have some strategies that I would like to backtest, now that there are no commissions I’d like to try seeing how some ideas I’ve had would work. What software do you all use to backtest and how expensive are they? Thanks
Amibroker here. 339 for professional edition, allows for realtime data and 64 bit. Throw in Amiquote which is a tool for importing data from a few sources. Yahoo, barchart, quandl, few others, 99$. Paid data is probably the best way. Norgate offers some highly rated EOD data. They have some functions built for Amibroker that allow with the combination of their delisted dataset, you can backtest across historical index constituents which is hard to do yourself or put together. I personally like it since I know it just works, when something doesn't line up then its my code not the backtest engine. I've been dabbling with python just for fun but I know I don't have the time to design my own portfolio level backtester or optimizer. I have to be realistic with my goals and time. AFL syntax is nice since it can be super easy, not much more complicated then Excel or it can get in there and become tricky depending on what you want to do. If you get complicated and need to get into the custom backtester and have no programming experience it can get tricky real quick. I've never had to use custom backtester but I keep my stuff rather simple. You'll see guys on the forum trying to base position size/scale in and out based off MAE of last "X" trades then dynamically change stops based of MFE over last 5 trades then try and score top 5 stocks for available funds based off "x". That's an exaggeration. The exploration window makes debugging code, scanning, exporting to Excel very simple. Theirs great ways to manage the data and scan for possible holes, missed splits, etc. For stocks the way you can organize stocks into sectors, industry, market, groups, then create whatever watchlists and apply filters for these groups to your AFL is nice. I couldn't find any software that made flipping through 800 stock charts quick and easy. Amibroker and TC2000 we're the only two that I found we're easy to organize stocks and get through charts quickly. If your looking to auto trade after with it, you will know have to code. Theirs a plugin for IB or you could build your own for whatever broker but their'll be no hand holding to get it going. It's a solid piece of software, with all the tools and capabilities you could think of and it's been around for awhile. Between the extensive manual, user knowledge base, knowledge base, forum, members area, theirs plenty of AFL out there to get you going.