Can anybody suggest some software for mutual fund backtesting Right now I'm using Tradestation (mainly because that's what I grew up with in my futures trading education). But basically what I'm looking for is something that's like Tradestation, except designed for mutual funds (open end, closed-end, ETFs).........the only software I could find was fasttrack (?FT4WEB?), but it didn't meet my expectations - i need something that will allow me to write my own strategies and code in the backtesting, a-la tradestation. I don't need something that only has the ability to use pre-defined abilities. Somehow i get the feeling i may be stuck w/ Tradestation :/
Many mutual fund traders who grew up on Fastrack now use Amibroker because it allows the use of the Fasttrack database, which is by far the best mutual fund database around. Trade is another popular app used by many sophisticated mutual fund traders. It's also free. You might check out the following message board for the best mutual fund trading info available anywhere: http://ft-talk.com/forums/ It costs $100 a year but you'll find that most members are very generous with sharing information. BTW, I firmly believe that the most successful, long term individual investors over the past 10-12 years have been those of us who have used Fasttrack. And that's compared to commodities and stocks. But the game we played for all those years ended when Spritzer jumped on his horse and got the rules changed because of the abuses of institutions and hedge funds. In hindsight, it was so easy and we didn't know how good we had it. Now we have to use hedging techniques, unmanged funds (Rydex, Profunds, Potomac) and ETFs in order to stay in the game. Way more volatility than being able to time actively managed funds.
I really want to like fasttrack, but again there are 2 key things that turn me away from it (and maybe there are add-ins or i'm just stupid with them, haha) - lack of ability to program your own signals. For example, if I wanted to program something stupid like buy if current month is a multiple of 2, and sell if it is a multiple of 3, I havn't found a way, either in the program or surfing for add-ons that will let me do that (and again I used that stupid example because i want to stress that I don't want to use all the default RSI, MACDs, etc...) - lack of intra-day data. For example, if I want 30minute bars for the SPDR, I can only get end closing price.
What am I missing here? The majority of mutual funds can easily be tracked with their settlement NAV's each and every day. Why couldnt' an individual simply load a database of symbols into TradeStation and perform testing in said manner?
I guess nothing; probably what I'm missing (and wanting, atleast using TS 2000i since i refuse to upgrade ) is the abiliity to look at it on the entire portfolio level, not just doing individual commodity after individual commodity the next proble m( ^_^) will be finding a decent data vendor Fasttrack seems good for EOD, but obviously I also need (want) access to intra-day stuff, like 30minute, 60minute, etc.. data bars for ETFs and CEFs