Well I dug into the 30-day trial of Multicharts this weekend. The charting and the backtesting is absolutely awesome--that is, if you're a computer genius that can figure out how to make it do what you want. There are a lot of nice indicators and signals built in and you can do quite a bit with it out of the box, but I found that a lot of basic things that I would need to build a strategy were lacking. For example, after several hours of reading, I still could not figure out how to calculate my daily p&l. There are a couple of TS EasyLanguage manuals available and I read through them, but they are very abstract and cryptic, at least for me. Are there any good resources out there with code libraries for this stuff? Or do I have to hire a programmer? I don't have TradeStation, so I can't access those forums and resources. Can't access the Multicharts forums either with a trial version. Also, can someone relate their experience using Multicharts for automated trading? Thanks in advance for any thoughts...
Hello jammy page, Talking about p&l. PLEditor supports NetProfit keyword allowing you to view and print p&l. How exactly would you like to have it displayed/represented/realized? If you gave us more details we'd try to help you. As for auto-trading, just like in most programs it's pretty basic in the current version of MultiCharts and only supports market orders. However, in 2.2 version (due by the end of this year) the auto-trading feature will be much more advanced and will support limit and stop orders.
What is PLeditor? It is software that your sell for use with so-called "EasyLanguage"? For example, I'd like to be able to check my daily P&L and use it as an input as to whether certain trades will or will not be made.
Multicharts has no bulit-in nice indicators and signals. All the indicators and signals are add-ons, just like Tradestation. BTW, all the "nice" indicators and signals you see are copied straight from Tradestation. None of them are Multicharts original.
So where does one find them? On the Tradestation forums? Is there anywhere else to look, because I don't have access to Tradestation. Thanks...
Multicharts is eventually going to be better than Tradestation for people that write their own strategies if they implement the strategy to brokerage interface well. They will however probably want to maintain all sorts of backward compatability so that people can run their third party stuff they bought so they will be carrying that huge burden all the way and it could make enough of a mess that you would wind up with a slightly improved tradestation... EZ language has some major flaws in it that are carried over from the 1980's, probably Multicharts will not have those at least... If I were running the Multicharts project I would deemphasize backward compatability, move away from the stock model to the futures model [do you really want to have problems with "buy to cover" and "sellshort" in a futures backtest? ] and offer to rewrite stuff that was not backward compatable for free, it's Easy Language after all, takes about 5 minutes to write something once you are used to it... The new Easy Language reference manual has 1300 or so pages!! I'm not so sure how easy it can be for a beginner... but it is the only choice nearly, for a self teaching programmer, I really don't thing anybody is going to master C# on his own, not in one lifetime...
Obviously it's hard to write 1639 posts on all kinds of subjects and at the same time to have a deep understanding of every problem discussed. In your every response a negative attitude towards our product can be clearly seen. Have you suffered from our product to such an extent that in every single topic you're looking for something negative? Regarding your comments. If you don't know the difference between add-ons and the standard package I would like to remind you that add-ons are installed onto the default product version. Which is not the case with MultiCharts. MultiCharts has almost 500 signals and indicators. Most of those are widely known indicators which are available on the internet. That's why we didn't think it necessary to make our own versions of something that was written long ago. Apart from classic indicators, MultiCharts has a lot of sophisticated studies developed by our partners such as Jan Arps, TraderLogic, Roy Kelly etc. Many indicators were created by our sofware engineers. Considering the above, Tums, if you want to sound competent do your homework and study the problem first and then make expert comments. Otherwise, you're not doing users any good by misinforming them about the product and thus preventing them from getting something they might really need. Regards.
Hello, PLEditor is an editor for writing scripts. It is part of MultiCharts. It is not sold separately. It is provided in the standard MultiCharts package and supports EasyLanguage. Also, it allows using functions unavailable in EasyLanguage. If you use daily bars for trading all you need is reference netprofit values to accept or decline potential trades. Regarding the question where indicators written in EasyLanguage can be found. In fact if you search google for EasyLanguage you will find a lot of interesting studies because thousands of people have been writing indicators for over 20 years. 99% of those studies can be used in MultiCharts. You can also look for indicators here: http://www.tssupport.com/support/base/ We have gathered over 2500 EasyLanguage indicators when we were developing and testing the program and we'll be glad to share them with you.
No need to feel offended. I wasn't degrading MC, I was pointing out the obvious -- MC uses the add-on method. It is the same design set up as Tradestation. I don't see why you see it as an insult, or that the design is any less than Tradestation. If you want to comment on my statement that all the included add-ons are copied from Tradestation, please show your substance. Credit where credit is due -- the indicators and signals are COPIED from Tradestation. They are NOT yours. Pay add-on developed by partners are NOT your add-ons. They require additional payment or subscription. These pay add-ons are also available for other charting packages.