Hi Higgs, I am with you and share your thoughts regarding the VB-like language.I am a "non programmer" trader and have purchased Traders Studio to enable me to fully test the systems and incorporate position sizing algorithms that I had develped in AIQ. I do admit the learning curve for myself is a bit steep,but that is to be expected with all the power Traders Studio offers...assuming I can harness it!!! With that said,Murray and the staff have been EXCEEDINGLY responsive in their efforts to simplify some of the coding for users such as myself.I am really looking foward to their new releases..
Hi all - this is my first post on EliteTrader but I have been developing, testing and implementing quantitative trading systems for the past 15 or so years. I have been a Trading Blox Builder (TBB) user for just over a year now and I can honestly say that it is the best and most comprehensive trading development platform that I have ever used. Droskill: TBB performs true portfolio-level testing - this means that you are able to test rather sophisticated risk management, money management and dynamic portfolio selection strategies without ever hitting a wall. Execution speed is quite impressive. For example, testing the Turtle System on a portfolio of about 140 markets over a 26 year period takes about 40 seconds to complete. Contrary to what Murray said, the code to all included systems is indeed visible and easily alterable (it is not pre-compiled). I'd be interested to know how long would it take TraderStudio and other similar packages to execute a similar simulation. Finally and perhaps most important of all, the level of technical support that I have received from Curtis and Tim over at TradingBlox has been truly outstanding. Keep in mind that I am a customer of TB and have no link (financial or otherwise) to the Firm. If anything, I would probably prefer that TBB NOT fall into the hands of other users
If I could ask a related question without hijacking this tread much appreciated. I would like to learn how to backtest as right now I just backtest manually, very slow. I have never used Trade Station, don't know easy language. Would Traders Studio be difficult to use? It sounds good, watched some of their videos. I do understand, no offense Murray, that people are always putting their best foot forward when attempting to sell something, I used to sell for 7 years before trading. I looked at Traders Studio website, not sure everything it entails. I appears to backtest historical data and possibly give some strategies based on back testing? Am I missing something? Is there a book I should read. What is enough data, too much data? I started a thread on this topic, but received on a couple of responses. I am aware I should be wary of curve fitting over optimizing, but don't know much more than that.
Tell me a little more about yourself. Do you have basic computer knowledge, creating a directory, copying files ect?. Also what other programs have you used ?, for example Excel. If you have questions you feel funny asking , just PM me and I will do my best to answer them. In terms of books, Perry Kaufman's , New Trading systems and Methods, should be in everyone's library. Next my Technology and Trading book ,which is a collection of all the articles I have written since 1995. This cover any topic you would be interested in. The book is organized by topic and level of material. Here is a link for the book. http://www.tradersstudio.com/Produc...ID/5/psnavcmd/CatalogItemDetails/Default.aspx Another book you would enjoy is Traders Secrets. Trader Secrets co-written by me and Adrienne Laris Toghraie, is a book about 14 people from all walks of life who became successful traders. In most other interview books they offer their life story but little information about their trading methodologies or psychology. In this book they are asked to share with us what made them successful and what trading methodology do they use. We learned that these every day people were willing to share more than the famous "Wizard Traders." We increased the value of what they told us even more by analyzing and summarizing both their trading methods and the psychology they used to become successful, at the end of each chapter. http://www.tradersstudio.com/Produc...ID/5/psnavcmd/CatalogItemDetails/Default.aspx Finally , John Murphy's "Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets" This will be a good starting point in books for you about trading and system development. You don't need to spend 1000's on books. If I can tell you one thing about Trading systems, the premise of your system must be valid and make sense. If not your results don't matter, you should not trust it. I have a question for ET members , when I restart my system development thread should I start from the beginning and cover basic topics , for example , discussing issues involved with selecting data for backtesting ? Now back to your question about how easy it is to use TradersStudio. TradersStudio comes with 300 pages of step by step tutorials documentation. If you want to run the systems that come with the product and learn about backtesting and optimization starting there , you will be up in a hour. If you want to write your own systems it depends on your background. We have many customers who never wrote code before who are programming whatever they need themselves in TradersStudio. If you want to see some commercial quality fully disclosed systems with code, then you can add the System pack to TradersStudio. This will add the Turtle system, Super Turtle, Thirty Year bond system and an SP500 market timer. Super Turtle is my adaptive version of the Turtle system. These systems have a long track record for their core logic, My three orginal systems have been profitable for 5-10 years since I originally designed the concept. The Turtle system of course even longer. TradersStudio alone is $499.00 and it is $799.00 with these additional 4 systems. http://www.tradersstudio.com/Produc...ID/5/psnavcmd/CatalogItemDetails/Default.aspx The key about TradersStudio is it allows you to test a system on not only one market but a basket of markets and find the best set of parameters on the basket, this helps avoid curve fitting. It also allow you to design logic for money management and testing combinations of multiple systems using a single trading account. Combining multiple systems which have a low correlation to each other is the best way to reduce risk and increase the chances of making consistant profits.