taowave, No you can't. I was an Ensign user for about 1 year. No purchase is available. Kind regards, MK
agreed; although ensign is excellent software, backtesting is probably one of its few weaker areas. i think you can create entry/exit signals but it doesn't have the detailed reporting (such as equity curve, profit factors, drawdowns etc.); i have had to write my own routines for this.
I'm a past (10 year) user of Ensign and loved it for a while. Then I ran into problems. Backtesting is extremely limited and like yoohoo said, complicated. As far as I know now you will never be able to integrate a trading platform into it for automated trading. Howard won't allow it. I was an intense user, monitoring over 30 different markets each day and I found Ensign couldn't handle it. Even running 3 Markets constantly for 24 hours, I would get an "Out of Memory" error every morning (I was running 2 gig of RAM) and my system would force close Ensign. Under normal situations this wouldn't be a problem but with Ensign if you loose data you must manually "Refresh" your charts INDIVIDUALLY to get back all of the data you lost. 50 charts and your trading day is shot. Another problem the refresh causes is going on vacation. You can only recapture 6 days worth of data if your computer is off. If you are gone for 10 days you have a aggravating 4 day gap of lost data. The Lease is irritating as well. I use MultiCharts now and it has it's own quirks but it has an auto refresh each time you turn it on for 30 days, I leave 10 Markets with 50 charts open at a time without any memory loss and the one time charge is less than 8 months of Ensign. There isn't a backtest feature yet but they are at least working on it. On top of that they will be integrating a trading platform into it like tradestation has within 6 months, they have a separate FOREX module and they are working with OpenTick to be able to offer free or a limited charge for data.
I'm thinking of leaving Ensign too. I've used it since the DOS days with a Bonneville satelite feed. Ensign used to fly under the radar and they catered to real traders. Now it seems they have more novice and retail traders. Go visit some of the chat rooms they have and you will see some of the most unbelievable bs ever. They used to make changes, now I just get "software won't do that". Like Proft said, charts don't refresh. Every morning I have to manually refresh all charts. Also, I have charts linke by groups so that if I change the time in one chart, all the other charts change also. This has NEVER worked. Always have to refresh. Anyway I'm thinking about TS. Can you still buy TS or is it just for account holders?
If you are considering Trade Station,you should also take a look at Traders Studio...It reads EasyLanguage,and costs about $499.Right now,its EOD,but it can test intra-day data.It has extensive portfolio testing capabilities and a very interesting approach to sophistictaed backtesting.It is a bit weak in the charting area,but a new upgrade is scheduled for release shortly. I am not affiliated with the company in any way..I just think its the best system tester for equities on the market.