Please comment. I am using its evaluation EOD, found erros in Reuter's data feed. Disappointed. Heard that its backtesting has problem in the past, but not sure if it is fixed.
You can take a look here: http://www.tradingpatterns.com/Literature/backtesting/backtesting.html It appears that one of the programs used in the paper is Metastock, an older version of it. I am not sure if all problems are fixed. Take a look here: http://www.trade2win.com/boards/metastock/69510-bug-metastock-pro-forex-careful.html I heard that some users of the older version have contacted the author of that paper and are trying to get thefull details because they are considering all options, including legal options. If Equis knew of the problems and they did nothing about it they must at least return the money all these people paid for an allegedly crap product. I will contact the author today and I will ask for a copy of the full paper that has details about the products. This can prove to be a very serious matter.
It is ok (used it for years) but I have also noticed some problems with the EOD data. For instance on the Crude Oil continuous it shows some days with the same price for OHLC (2/24 for instance shows 80.00 for all four prices). I haven't yet had time to investigate these discrepancies but hopefully they can be corrected. Metastock has not seen any major improvements in about 8 years or so. Backtesting is pathetic and there is no good trading capability. I still use it for historical daily charts but that is about it and unless I can fix the data issues in the EOD charts I might consider ditching it altogether.
I really want to have a good charting software. I am not sure if I should return the Metastock EOD and get back money. The software looks professional. But if the data is often wrong and the backtesting does not really produce accurate results. Then it is meaningless. Metastock has 30 days money back guarantee. It sounds it has confidence on its product. But before purchasing, I ve heard people talk bad about its data accuracy. I also found errors on the chart. It shows wrong data. I asked the support staff. They said they are checking. Don't know which other software to try. Metastock seems a big name as it is a Reuters company. Disappointed.
The backtesting function seems very professional and attractive. But if it does not produce correct results according to criteria set, i will cause troubles to the users. Tradestation is too expensive to me. Do you think TS is good?
I've never used TradeStation. I have mostly replaced MetaStock with SierraChart. It works with a number of brokers and has good backtesting and trading capabilities. The charts are very good too. I think it is light years ahead in other areas that MetaStock doesn't even have. Their website is not flashy and they aren't a big company like Reuters but they support their product and will change things based on feedback from their forum.
Metastock has always been a well made product for the investor who wants to do technical analysis. Professional traders might use it for quick analysis but I doubt seriously any pro would attempt to trade with Metastock or Metastock Pro for a host of reasons. Metastock grew out of the 90âs marriage of computers and technical analysis. For many traders the cheap price tag compared to Omega Research expensive products made it the initial buy. I had Metastock version 3 and Omega Researches Tradestation in the 90's. Metastockâs language had much more power than Easy Language. Metastock could have won the battle but they had money problems. So Metastock was bought out by Reuters. Reuters wanted them as an avenue to sell their data. Word had it they never intended to build on to Metastock. However, Metastock was able to grow because third party developers came to their rescue. And Tradestation became a brokerage. As a retired IT person I believe there is no comparison between the two today. Tradestation wins all to awards in TASC Magazines for stock or futures trading systems. That is all I use. The sophisticated trading systems I make a living at today in TS are IMO not possible to design, program and execute with Metastock. On the flip side Metastock still wins all the TASC awards for analytical software. So if your goal is to use indicators and just do technical analysis Metastock may be the program you are looking for. They still have a wide variety of plug in indictors that do great analysis.
Rabbitone's post is pretty well spot on. The TASC awards probably carry the least cred of any (didn't they vote eSignal the #1 data provider? I mean, give me a break). I used Metastock when they were first starting out and it was fine for my needs. Things started going downhill when Reuters purchased them and we lost the ability to feed the program with anyone else's data. The Reuters data was so crappy that I had to quit using the program and had to port all my work over to Amibroker (in the end, that wasn't a huge burden since most of my early 'work' wasn't worth saving, but like all of us, I had to do it to find out what doesn't work). In addition, there were big problems with the backtester, which, it seems, they haven't sorted out yet. It's unbelievable that I'm hearing about problems with the Reuters data feed all these years later, especially if all you're using is EOD. When I go to sleep at night, I dream of a company offering CQG-quality data at less than $700/month. And let's face it, CQG isn't even the cream of the crop. The last time I saw it, Metastock still looked nice.
I've been using Metastock for 14 years. It still has the most beautiful charts, and also has a very useful explorer that I frequently use to find targets. I do not use the backtester as I am purely a discretionary trader. If I think of a strategy I can quickly code the signal and drop it onto a few charts to see if it's any good. Whilst its language is not as powerful as Amibroker, Tradestation, etc, it's easy to understand and work with. What Reuters needs to do with MS is to shift its focus from adding more systems and indicators to adding features and improving the product's flexibility. I have little use for their systems and do not need any more indicators, so the only reason I have to update MS is if my operating system does not support it. As for Reuters data there is no need to use it if you stay away from their QuoteCenter version. Use the EOD or esignal version instead. In short, if you are a discretionary trader MS is a very useful tool that can make you money, but if you are into systems you'd best look elsewhere.
I've been using mtastock for even longer , when looking at charts and trying to understand whats going on ms is easiest and quickest to use and easy to write simple indicators to highlight them , I don't use the backtesting and don't use 99%of the indicators , would like the forming and charting/scanning of pairs easier , but it's not easy to do this on tradestation either , currently also use sierra , which in some ways has very good pair scanning abilties , though writing code on sierra is complicated to say least .