Does anyone have experience with metastock. It is a product of Reuters and is supposed to do charting, buy sell signals, and simulations. metastock.com
I love it, just got 10.1 for eSignal after upgrading several times from version 6 I've heard Tradestation is slightly better but I wouldn't want to be locked into their brokerage/data service
I'll represent the other side. I switched to Amibroker after a few years with Metastock. In my opinion, Metastock started to go downhill after the company was sold to Reuters. This often happens when the people who drove the innovation at a company cash in and leave. I found that the Reuters data feed was less than accurate. Support was indifferent at Reuters Data, and became that way at Metastock as well, since the Reuters Data people got handed the job of supporting Metastock as well, or so it seemed to me. The biggest issue, though, was ongoing known issues with the Backtester in Metastock. These issues were well known among advanced Metastock users. I had asked support when they thought the problems would be fixed. Their reply was that they did not know. I have been away from MS for years now so maybe these issues are fixed. For anyone doing serious system testing, there are other, better programs out there. However, Metastock has better graphics and drawing capabilities than Amibroker. There is an active Metastock user community at Yahoo Groups - I suggest you sign up there, review some posts and ask your questions. Disclaimer - Amibroker is best used by people who have some programming skills.
I use Metastock, too. I like it, but it is really resource consuming, thus you need a fast computer, if you use it in realtime with several charts open. EOD is not a problem. If you like to backtest a lot, go for Tradestation, otherwise is Metastock a good deal. Sundog
I use Metastock EOD. I have not tried the real-time version. I like it and it is helpful for me. I'm getting ready to try the real-time version of Tradestation. Given the fact that you basically can get Tradestation for free with a nominal level of trading activity, I think that may make more sense.
I'll represent the other side of the other side, people with zero programming skills, and lacking even the basic ability to learn said skills. In any programming language. I presume you mean the standard metastock product, such as this; http://www.equis.com/ I used the old EOD version, some years ago-im sure its improved, i hope its improved, even heavy programmers back then said there were "fundamental issues" with its basic structure, whatever that means. It sucked, for my purposes at the time , and still, basic charting and tracking-simple stuff, you'd think. Its about as user friendly and intuitive as windows, might be a breeze for a geek, can do stuff and make pretty charts, but you must be a geek basically to appreciate its foibles and idiosyncrasies, and , like anything in trading, it goes with the territory- it assumes your a programming genius , thats the real key, i wasnt and arent. If your a PC Geekazoid, metastock might be for you, because you would expect it to self destruct on you, and you'll have to fix it somehow. A lot of people swear by it, love the damn program, remember i only had the old version eod, and i just swore AT it, and am still planning a ceremonial burning of this software.
I've used MetaStock Pro (real-time) since '98, and its predecessor, MetaStock R-T, before that. If your trades are primarily from chart formations and common indicators, MS Pro is excellent. If you're into custom formulae, MS Pro has extensive ability for that too. If you archive data on your hard drive (vs. running live charts from the server of your data source), MS Pro is quite friendly to the use of CPU, RAM and resources.
Nik, can you be more specific about the backtester problems? I just ordered APS Automatic Pattern Search, which is a program that finds patterns and generates MS code and I'll be using the backtester to work on some ideas I have about combining those patterns with indicators, specifically DMI and RSI. I wonder if I should switch to Tradestation. I have MS 7.02 Pro real-time. John
Hi John It's been a while (like 4 years) so I can't recall specifics. What I remember is I was getting some weird results from backtesting and I asked about it at the Yahoo boards. I was told there that there were some coding problems and that Metastock were aware of the problems and were working on them. That's when I called Reuters, and the response I got at that time was kind of apathetic - they obviously hadn't told their CSRs to treat the problem seriously with customers who called in asking about it. Really, the thing to do is to sign up at the Yahoo Groups and join the Metastock forum. Until very recently I still had my membership at that place. There are people who have been there for years and they would be able to help you. In particular, you should look for a guy called Jose Silva. He was always very willing to help me out and would undoubtedly know what I am referring to and whether the issues were resolved. I have to believe they were.
Nik, thanks for the suggestion. I recall I was getting some weird results from another program of the same kind way back. One must be very careful with those programs. John