The trendlines are another reason I prefer QT because we draw so many of them. You draw trendlines immediately with with your mouse. Just left click and hold and draw your trendline. Right click on the trendline youve just drawn and select copy and it puts a parallel trendline which you just move to where you want it. The studies are the macd and stochastic with Jacks settings of 5,13,6 and 14,1,3 respectively. I just look at them occasionally to see if they confirm what Im thinking as to direction.
a little off topic but i'd rather post it here, because we have good people... is this possible? i mean i DID it, but i'm thinking the sim software probably isn't accurate enough when trades are this quick. i was looking at the dom and noticed it's a safe entry when the dom starts flashing to a 'new' price...to enter on the previous price...was looking also at volume considerations on the chart...rate of increase in volume if the dom flashed against me, i set to wash. i see that the 3 live trades took longer to get filled on, so that is my reservation about it.
A lightbulb pehaps... ... I am not kidding when I say the potential is so vast and delivery spectrum so wide. I have notebooks upon notebooks of critical thought of different ways of dicing aspects. Eventually you realize the FUNDAMENTALS that are rock solid... What is this program that you use anyway. I always have to use excel and it can be a pain to program... MAK!
Also double check to make sure that when your sim shorts that it lifts the BID price and covers at the ASK price and vice verse for LONGS. I can't tell you how many backtesters immediately screw that up. Then they complain that their sim results are different from live. For sure it is for this reason. Often the sim just lifts the current price. If the current price is an ASK and your sim lifts the ASK assuming it is entering a SHORT, it has then failed to recognize that the ASK was not an available short price. MAK!
Dan, to add more to what Mak just explained, I also use BT occassionally and if you don't have the settings for fill delay set in BT, you will not get close to a realistic feel for what will happen live. The default settings in BT will fill you with one price touch (strategy runner used to do this too). I think the latest version of BT has a new setting that let's you populate the delay with whatever you want. Old version had preset values that still weren't realistic IMO. I've switched back to Ninjatrader's sim specifically for this reason. It is quite a bit more realistic in that it will usually not fill you unless price moves through your entry/exit price. This is much more an issue if your scalping or trading small targets. There's nothing worse than writing and forward testing a system based on unrealistic fills or a negative offset system (that looks into the future of your historical data during backtest). Been there, done that, with real money no less (still nursing the wounds).
no doubt guys, i'm quite sure the fills were unrealistic...that is, i was getting filled too soon in sim. still, i will investigate further for myself. ya, BT's fill is based on the last price, not lifting of the Bid or Ask. shucks. looking further, BT has a "buy at ask, and sell at bid" buttons. so this might work? i will try it out tomorrow some. "- added ability to buy at higher than the ask price or short lower than the bid price - click Trade Settings/Entry Method/Right-Click/Set Overticks for Buy at Ask/Short at Bid, a window will pop up letting you set the amount of ticks over or under the ask or bid for your order "
Easy, where are you getting your historical data? Perhaps I misread, but QT doesn't look like they have hist. data for futures... Anthony