TradersStudio Summer Sale

We are giving 15% off anything on TradersStudio.com for the next month. We are not doing a e-mail on this sale now, just announcing it on ET.

This sale gives you a chance to get TradersStudio for only 425.00!.

 

Thanks, Murray for the wonderful offer!

Can you please give me prices and links for some of your most popular products along with the discount details?

 

Murray, you keep on announcing sales, but the product has been virtually "stuck" in the same state for almost a year. Why the focus on marketing a product that is NOT improving instead of development??? The "Pro" version is no where in sight despite repeated unfulfilled promises.

Basic functions/features available on competing platforms are still missing. Speed of backtesting on the platform is still atrocious.

The platform had great promise, but lots of unfulfilled potential. Very disappointing.

 

I understand your frustration but it is not true that the product isn't improving. Intermittently I've been receiving beta releases that enrich the eod functionality quite extensively. What is true is that tradersstudio should perhaps consider issueing a point release prior to the full RT release, I think the quantity of change merits that.

Note that I am not beta testing the RT functions so what I have doesn't include a real-time Db and broker interfaces etc, though I do see some of the hooks. I do not know what the exact scope of RT will be. From what i see I am reasonably confident that the RT features, functions & behaviours will be well integrated (at a high level). So from a backtesting & research point of view I am hopeful that the RT release will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Which basic features are you referring to? In my work, mostly programming and research, I have not encountered any fundamental features stopping me from doing anything.

I don't agree with this remark. I have quite stringent requirements for a backtesting platform. And Tradersstudio is one of the best non-institutional products out there. It's promise is most definitely not unfulfilled and it's a bonus that it is pretty good value for money.

I will also say this. The industry generally is in a rut. I see no products out there truely pushing the envelope. I suspect vendors are taking end users and their requirements for granted. Features are thoroughly commodotized which makes the implementation details more important. Tradersstudio's backtest and money management engine is as good as anything out there though you are right that it's not the fastest.

So while RT capabilities might define a product for you i think you'll agree that to be only a small part of what makes a product legitimate or not. That said, I suppose real-time features are sexy and people want more sex!


Thx
D

 

Fundjunkie,

You are clearly a big fan of Traders Studio as I used to be and there is inherent bias in your comments.

I've used TS for about two years, I know and like Murray and consider him a friend, but I don't do my friends any good, if I deceive them or refuse to be candid with them.

I stand by ALL my comments in the previous post.

Intermittent beta releases with minor tweaks or bug fixes for bugs that shouldn't exist in the first place - is not what I consider improvement.

I do not at this time have a major need for RT trading...so you were absolutely incorrect in making that assumption and the attendant comments.

My firm position is that the Traders Studio EOD version has not had any substantial improvement in over a year, its speed is atrocious , many useful functions/features remain missing....again I maintain Traders Studio is a product of unfulfilled potential.

Let me comment on the speed issue:

I repeat the speed is ATROCIOUS ; consider this I was able to convert an existing system to a new platform, modify it and set it up within literally a few minutes – about 30minutes or less- and this is for a language that I am still learning – and the backtesting of this system occurred LIGHTNING FAST! Note also that this is a fairly long system – over 10 pages long. I am still amazed at this…and infuriated at how much time and effort I wasted with Traders Studio – the same system in TS would take me days while dealing with frequent inexplicable crashes. This raises another point: TS is incredibly unstable – crashing multiple times each day

I don't want to turn this into a TS vs XYZ platform posting but I will make the following points:

1. I am aware of at least 2 -3 other platforms that are constantly improving and increasing their edge over TS.

2. There are at least 2 -3 other platforms that have deeper/richer features/functions sets.


3. Support for TS is becoming very weak. I am a trial user of another competing product...and even as a trial user (still not well versed in the product) the support I have received
has been EXCELLENT!

4. I am sure I am not the only one who shares these opinions of TS...just look on ET and there are/were many people who came to TS and have now gone elsewhere. Additionally, TS lacks the deep engaged user base you will find with other platforms… That fact alone is very telling.

I still use TS reluctantly...but I am working on converting my systems to a new platform. The main promise of TS is the session/tradeplan mechanism and its rich reporting framework. I still do not know of another platform that has this great concept of sessions/tradeplans – properly implemented; actually platform GHI implements this via their DEF mechanism. I am still partial however, to Traders Studio session/tradeplan framework – possibly becuase I am used to it. This framework should have made it a premier multi-system multi-market portfolio R & D tool. Sadly the session/tradeplan framework is buggy, clunky and EXTREMELY slow. The reporting framework while fairly rich is still missing basic report stats. Finally to worsen matters, many useful functions/features remain missing and a lot of the existing ones have/used to have bugs and the entire platform is both extremely slow and buggy.

Perhaps you now see my frustration.

I have shared thee issues with Murray directly, but I think since I have publicly recommended TS to others..I need to in the spirit of honesty and fairness disclose my concerns/frustrations publicly. Perhaps this will propel Murray to realize the full potential of his platform. If and when he does I will be there rooting for him; until then I must inform others of the many shortcomings of TS.

 

I suppose I am biased as I am not actively researching the market. But I am far less biased than most who choose to post around here. But that being said, anyone and everyone is biased - that's what opinion is.

As you metioned it's the separation of session and tradeplan that attracts me to the product. I am also exploring the use of the API to serve my programming needs which are sometimes quite advanced - or so I'm told.

I'm not really all that interested in anything else as everything on the market comes across as commodity and not giving me the flexibility (fredom) to implement what i want how I want it.

Tradersstudio doesn't give me that either but it's solid in the areas that matter. I acknowledge your point about performance but as a pragmatist I don't find it gets in my way. You're either doing huge backtests/optimizations or are, perhaps, more impatient than me.

For ordinary traders looking to backtest and do some research it's more than decent and good value for money. Believe me, I do have a go at Murray regarding how the product stacks up and where it is and should be going. but that doesn't mean i trash it for what it is now. And quite honestly, everything else I lay my hands on is fundamentally poor vs my key criteria.

I would agree with you. But you know aswell as me that is exactly what componies do. they roll up a set of bugfixes and expansion of the codebase as a new point or major release.

I repeat, everything that vendors out there are doing is commodity. They never surprise me with anything they offer or add to their products. Their primary target seems to be to serve people drawing trendlines on charts rather than people like me wanting to accurately and flexibly express their ideas in code.

I don't see how converting a set of system code would ever take much more than 30 minutes once it has been initially realised on the source platform.

My issues with tradersstudio's coding environement is that it is not C# (my preferred lanuage) and that it doesn't have a proper IDE. This is why I'm investigating the API. I'll then be able to everything in C# and have much greater power available to me.

The speed issue is a legitimate concern. But it is relative, not absolute. By that I mean, it depends on the type of backtests you're undertaking - you're pointing out that backtesting performance doesn't scale well and i agree with that. However, for the vast majority of users the type of testing they'll be doing will be handled fine by Tradersstudio.

A larger system exposes the user to the potential of type mismatch errors and suchlike which Tradersstudio doesn't always handle appropriately. I have already discussed this with them - that exception handling needs to be improved as some of the errors thrown will only confuse the end user.

I experience some crashes but not as many as you suggest. They generally correlate with magnitude and quantity of coding errors. Maybe I'm more experienced with generating exception free code than you are? I'm not trying to be condescending with that remark btw. You could, in fact, be far more experienced than me - I'm not a pro developer.

That said, some of the exceptions that do occur should be handled more gracefully than they are. But believe me, I've used other products tha really are buggy. Tradersstudio has nothing on them.

Well, I can only say that i have received good support although my issues often need to go to Murray or a developer.

I'm unware of the many who came and went but it is a free market. How do you define a deeply engaged userbase? I am a deeply engaged user but don't post on forums asking people how to do stuff - I don't need to.

I agree that the forum isn't as busy as it could be. I think that's the fault of two things:

- Lack of moderator engagement. leadership and mentoring through that engagement.
- Lack of overt ement from users like me, I suppose.

I do, and I also get frustrated with TS too. I suspect your frustration curve is somewhat steeper than mine. As i see it some key differences characterizing my view in contrast to yours are, amongst other things:

- I know that other platforms out there would frustrate me just as much or more than TS.
- I don't see the need to publicly slate a product generally out of frustration with some of it's shortcomings.
- I always weight benefit against cost. From a cst benefit point of view Tradersstudio is still good.


Thx
D

 

I have been using TradersStudio for quite sometime and have yet to find anyhing wrong or dissapointing with it. Only at times, I wish to have newer versions faster maybe so that I can get more free add-ons etc., greedy, is it not?

My frank opinion of the software is that I am satisfied with it so far and have found it fulfilling my requirements and expectations satisfactorily so far. I am happy with it and shall surely recommend to others to use it.

 

I have bought TradersStudio recently and was surprised to read about the shortcomings of it. Although, I have not tried it out fully, but have yet to see or face the ones as mentioned. It looks fine and have not shown any errors so far, unless ofcourse I missed them. However, I have a word of appreciation for Mr. Murray, who found time to help me set up and solve simple queries despite his busy schedule. Thanks, Murray for your wonderful support

 

Hi folks

I am currently trying to decide on a backtest/strategy develop/trade package and have found all of the posts on TradersStudio and others very useful indeed. many thanks to everyone who has contributed.

I must say I've been very taken by the amount of favourable comment about TradersStudio but I'm glad to see CPTrader voicing some negative opinions. However, as a novice mechanical trader I think I would still be some distance away from some of the issues mentioned by CPTrader. Could you comment on that please?

Does anyone else have any other issues with TradersStudio that I might not have seen in all of the posts I've read? I'd be interested to hear.

I would not be strong on programming but have a reasonable knowledge of VB, so it appears that TradersStudio would be suitable for me in that regard. I suspect some of the rival programmes mentioned by CPTrader would be more advanced and therefore unsuitable. However, if that is not the case you might let me know.

Thanks in advance

 

So far, I am happy with TradersStudio and maybe you might also be. Since, you say you are okay with VB, so easylanguage shall be easy to pick up. Besides, you can also reuse and convert other codes like TradeStation code to use in TradeStation. Please have a look here to see what I mean:
http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=142202