It's good you said "available" and not "open" because they're very different. Open means GPL or one of those licenses which give the user freedom. "Open" goes further. It means that defect list is "open" or public, the road map is open or public. It also means that the project accepts fixes and changes back into the source so users know they'll be there in the next release. Otherwise, the source is open like Microsoft .NET framework. You can look but don't touch because any changes you make won't be there in the next release. So, in my mind, open source goes far more than just making source code visible or having a number to call to "negotiate" a source deal. Hey, just my 2 cents worth. Sincerely, Wayne
I only have a couple of relatively uncorrelated instruments that I trade, don't need anything more to generate enough income for my needs. I have to echo Fractal's approach, export tick data and grind it through a set of perl scripts that I wrote to determine optimal volume bar sizing. The walk forward tests are run over the weekend while I'm doing other things, so speed isn't all that important. The next release of TS is rumored to finally include range bars, looking forward to that.
Yes. I use range bars also in TickZOOM right now. I kind of think very long bars time based bars are kind of "evil". It seems there's 2 ways of implementing range bars. One is, when there's a gap of say a 100 points. Some software I used will generate phony range bars to fill that gap. Does anyone like that? I don't because then I can's "see" what happened. Instead, TickZOOM (and it can be optional) always looks at the next tick and if it's beyond the range limit, it starts a new bar. So 95% of the time the bars are constant range but if there's sudden news and a big jump then the previous bar may not complete it's range and you have gap to the open of the next bar. I LOVE that versus a time bar that just looks like a real LONG bar but you can't see in the middle there was a big gap of jump in prices. Just curious what others think. Wayne
By the way, TickZOOM also has point & figure bars. I used them for a while and decided they don't fit my style. But they're quite cool to look at. Does any body have any other bar preferences? Another type of bar in TickZOOM. Most software makes you choose the bar interval and bar duration as the same. TickZOOM allows you to make them different. Plus it allows rolling bars. In other words, let's say you want 10 minute bars. That means, usually, that they complete every 10 minutes (interval) and cover the last 10 minutes. In TickZOOM you can make the bar 10 minutes but make the during 20 minutes. That creates a "rolling" time bar which means that the bar will complete every 10 minutes. But when it starts it will cover the last 20 minutes and it will "roll" to the end by always covering the last 20 minutes of time. Here's how I use it some times. People like to often see pro-rated volume. Pro-rated volume is ugly because in the beginning of the bar you get wild swings and then it calms down now the end. If you use a rolling bar 10 minutes for 10 minutes, then volume also rolls and coveres that last 10 full minutes of ticks. That way, the volume for the next bar smoothly develops to the point where you want it. Sincerely, Wayne
By the way, OpenQuant, I'm curious. I never got to try OpenQuant software. Does it allow any combination or number of time bar intervals and instruments to be used with the same strategy? In other words, can I in the same strategy say: If today's open is higher then last month high and the 10 minute bar open is below today's open and the is the 10 bar average of the 10 pip range bars higher than 5 bars ago? GoLong? You get the idea. Many platforms make that either impossible or a real pain to do. It TickZOOM it has the major bars always like minute, hour, session, day, week, month, and year plug each strategy in one line can request any other bar interval, range, volume, point & figure, it wants. What's cool is that's separate from charting. So when you run that strategy, you can look at it from any one of the bar intervals or even other intervals that it doesn't use. In other words, there's TOTAL freedom to use intervals any way you want to mix them. How close does OpenQuant come to that? Sincerely, Wayne
That's true. All software is vaporware till it gets released. Why not go order OpenQuant then, and quit complaining. I think that's OpenQuant's (the user) point here. Why wait on TickZOOM get OpenQuant now. Or NinjaTrader. I like it (too slow at ticks) and hear good things about OpenQuant (just closed source) but never tried it myself. There's PLENTY of options for the impatient. Hey do what a lot do buy several of them or try them all. You won't really be sure until then. That will keep you busy till TickZOOM is released at least. Sincerely, Wayne
yeah right. i think you are just fishing for others to contribute their code and knowledge. i think you got nothing.
Yeah, it does everything, as well as NT and others. PS. Ticks are just ticks... no magic... Cheers, Anton
Think what you like. There will still be a video demo of the working application this weekend and the source code released during or right after holidays. That's what I always have said from the beginning when asking if people thought it was worth while until now--release it during the holidays. My company gives almost 2 weeks straight of holiday time off. So I can easily finish all the rollout steps like setting up the Subversion server and security, testing the download process. etc. etc. It's a lot of work actually. More than I ever thought. So I'm fine with all the impatience. Do it already, etc. I just want to be clear that I deliver when I say will deliver. I don't miss promised deadlines. You should start harping about vaporware after the scheduled delivery date, don't you think? Enough said. Wayne