Cheap software for strategy testing

Discussion in 'Strategy Building' started by aviv, Jun 26, 2007.

  1. aviv

    aviv

    hi all,
    i'm new to the automated / strategy trading, and i'd like to try using it.
    i am a software developer, so i'm perfectly fine with writing code to do backtesting.
    it looks like tradestation is one of the most feature-rich, but it comes with a cost of at least $100 / month if you want to do the backtesting.
    can anyone recommend a cheaper software that can be programmed to do any type of strategy trading, that can be back-tested on historical quotes?

    many thanks!
     
  2. Hi, i'm in the same boat except that i don't know crap about programming but the best ones , the ones i like anyways, are Amibroker, Wealthlab and stratesearch, give them a try.
     
  3. Cheap/Inexpensive??? Amibroker....
     
  4. aviv

    aviv

    giles, can it be programmed to do sophisticated backtesting strats?
     
  5. YES.

    Check out the site and the yahooo club. There is aguy named herman who is awesome with help. There are a ton of strats from users as well.

    http://amibroker.com/library/
     
  6. aviv, if you can turn 10 futures a month you can get the TS fee waived.

    if you are a developer though have you considered just grabbing some tick data and just test in excel or roll your own little app?
    can't get much more cheaper or flexible than that if you have the programming skills.
     
  7. aviv

    aviv

    Correct :)
    I was actually thinking of playing with perl or matlab to manipulate the arrays of the quotes data- but then, a backtesting software (like tradestation) would save all the work of loading the feeds of quotes, consider dividends and splits, etc.
    I'll try amibroker, and see how it works. worst case, there's nothing like perl...
     
  8. mde2004

    mde2004

    Wealthlab is great for it imho.
     
  9. Amibroker and Stratasearch have free trials making them easy to try. I don't know if Wealthlab has the same.
     
  10. Aside from learning the language. AB is pretty simple....

    Though the AT strats have to be completely coded, no HighLevel AT interface as of yet. But for Backtesting, it's very nicely setup. I use it for futures.
     
    #10     Jun 27, 2007