Actually you only want to test for about 10 to 20 days because systems only work when they are in tune with the market. Market is changing constantly. A big mistake people make is that they backtest for years thinking the more data the better. More data is worst. Keep optimizing for the last 10 days every few days and your system will work better. John
I use TG for my forex trading. It does have some very unique tools that I find very valuable. The trend reversal signals are very good! I think the software is best for people who prefer to scalp or short term trade as the bulk of the tools are geared for that. Regardless of the newest system Chris comes up with, it all boils down to what tools work for you.
Thanks John, that's interesting to hear. Like I mentioned I just started to learn about backtesting so I appreciate input from all sides. One of the more knowledgeable traders in Woodies trading room says he run stats on a 5 day moving avg. to determine if his method is still working or not.
Bugscoe-what looked most interesting to me is the net/buy sell analysis. I am just skeptical that banks would allow topgun to track their trades. Do you like the heat map? It looked kind of vague to me. Light red/dark red green, etc.
I use the Buy/Sell Pressure tool on all my charts. Not sure how it works - it's sorta like a volume tool. I use it to gauge how strong the the buying or selling is. The Heat Map tool is very cool. Once you find the settings that work best, it can be a great heads up as to the strength or weakness of any particular currency. I have mine set up to gauge the weakness/strength of the dollar against all the majors. It's sorta like having a whole bunch of charts opened at once.
I don't buy the banks showing any vols to anyone. The only place to get FX vols is the CME. No bank or system would give that, especially to a "free" system. Crap they don't even give that to customers they beat up every day.
I Use TopGun software. First, the E-signal is not Forex Charts, or more specifically a white box version of Advanced Get. I download the Esignal installer from the Esignal home page and when it starts up the account entitlements only allow us to access the data feed. The E-signal forex feed is the GTIS Feed. Description is at this E-signal page. http://tinyurl.com/y7r3fv Nearly 200 global bank and broker contributions (Asia / Pacific Rim, Russia, Europe and North America in the E-signal GTIS feed. Get the complete list from the above page. Hmmm. Guess this throws water on Dan's understanding of the forex feed from E-signal. The software will also allow us to filter out the forex brokers that hunt stops, the main one being **CM. Yes Chris gets annoying sometimes, but he's only prodding us to use the Fib tools, because he analyzes everyones trades and knows that we can do better. He has access to records of all the trades byTop Gun traders thru MT4/FXDD. He is blunt sometimes, but he's got a lot on his plate. As for backtesting, he has a special version of the Acuity workstation/Top Gun specifically for backtesting, so you can backtest to your hearts content, if that is what you want to do. It creates an excel spreadsheet so you can compare different scenarios and settings. Yes, it is a good product and of course he hypes it because if you follow the system it does give a decent chance of making some pips. The best thing is it is free along with the Esignal, helpful for those starting out in FX, start out trading mini's and follow some of the free tutorials on the LeveragFX video page. I've been trading with it for 6 months and actually tried it in the fall of 2005 for a couple of months when it wasn't fully fleshed out, then tried some other systems and then came back to it Sept 2006. I'm not making a pile of money because I listen to my gut too much instead of sticking to watching the charts. Emotions still play too big a role in my trading. Regardless you do yourself a disservice to not try it out and see for yourself. I've tried a lot of systems and most of them use the same indicators. This program has a lot of indicators that you won't see everywhere else. One of them is their generically named "trend reversal" but it really is a Demark Sequential/Combo clone. Yes you can get it for Tradestation or have it on your Bloomberg terminal but what will it cost you. Try it, its free, then draw your own conclusion.
Just a side thought about E-signal forex data feed. You would be surprised what a good programmer can flesh out of an Esignal forex feed. Let me tell you Michael Fritz is a cracker jack programmer. Chris is just the front man. The bid view is another little utility from Top Gun, shows different banks and the bid/ask from each bank. The following capture is just a 2 minute snap of bid view. http://fxmoneymap.ca/bidview.gif Or maybe rank view would give you a different look at bid/ask. http://fxmoneymap.ca/rankview.gif
Just to give you an idea of the banks that contribute to the Esignal forex feed, take a gander at this list. This page is from Esignal but its labelled incorrectly as an .htx page so you get it as a download, but if you load it in your browser it basically is a web page. http://fxmoneymap.ca/forex2.html
Pip, That's great if it works for you, really. If I haven't mentioned before, I have no problem with someone pointing out my errors, if I made some, that's how we all learn. I do believe, as I have posted already, that they appear to have some really neat tools such as net buy/sell. Fibs are available in any decent charting package as you know. Dan