How much knowledge do you get out of your 60 second scan? You need to look closely at the charts yourself to understand how the time of day, volume and news effects price and volatility. I really like using the look back feature on IB were I can pick out four hours (say 10am to 2pm) of a trading day and look at how it played out yesterday and the day before and so on. Often I can find very tradable patterns.
ZF Trader, What is IB? I didnt think Interactive brokers had any backtest software? I sort of agree with your sentiment regarding backtesting. Any black box approach to look for a "statistical edge" on prior price pattern is a recipe for disaster. However, applying a well thought out logical plan, on historical data can give you confidence to trade your system going forward. Important, not to do any optimization on backtest, IMO.
IB Doesn't have any backtesting software per say but what I do is pour over chart of the same slice of the day (say the US equity open until noon) on different days going back over time. To do this I call up a four hour chart, click on the icon with a red left pointing arrow, then change the time and date to 20051101, 9:30am. I keep going back the last month to get a real feel for the market.
EDB, I am using TS8 to code strategies and Optimax for faster optimizing. I am interested in learning Visual Basic to use with Excel to manipulate data on excel to search for price patterns. I don't have any programming experience besides Easy Language Can you recommend any books on visual Basic to get me started. Also Is there other ways to write codes that go beyond the macros on Excel. Thanks, Keifer
A few days ago, I asked about portfolio optimization in AmiBroker because it is less expensive than TradersStudio. So far, no one has responded to my question. I decided to take the time and download the demo myself, play with it and read the docs to see what I could find out for myself. In the AmiBroker program and docs, I found references to the optimize function. Keep in mind, that I am fairly new to the programming part, it looks like you need to include this function in your code to optimize the parameters of the system. Based on the posts on EliteTrader and tutorials on the TradersStudio site, it looks like this is not something that has to be done when optimizing in TradersStudio. If the system takes the argument as a parameter, it can be optimized by filling in a dialog box and clicking the mouse. In TradeStation 4.0, individual markets can be optimized in much the same way but you cannot optimize across a portfolio. I also looked at the reports that are presented in AmiBroker. They are not as complete as TradeStationâs, even TradeStation 4.0. In playing with the AmiBroker program, I figured out how to get the results on a basket of markets, but I could not figure out how to view summary reports for a basket of markets and each individual market that is included in the basket. I really hope that I am missing something. Maybe it is somthing that I can't figure out in how to use AmiBroker or the demo on the site is not representative of the current product?
Hi. I am new here so please forgive me if you have beaten this subject to death. I have read the software reviews. I am looking for a good platform to backtest strategies. I would rather not pay a lot extra for data - but intraday data will be required. A good selection of indicators and economic variables would be nice. I am very comfortable programming. This platform will just be used for analysis - it will NOT be used for real time trading. Given these requirements, is there a clear choice between Wealth Lab Developer and TradeStation? Thanks.
wealthlab going backward , and tradestation is going forward each day Tradestation: -best charting analysis in trading industry available freely -best documention -brokerage and atuomated excution within itself -Easylangauge better developed and more blownup & complete for automation, though wealthscrip syntex equaliy powerfull -10times more supported in trading industry than wealth-lab for this purpose