i use backtesting to filter out all the crap other traders think are good. like averaging down, counter trend entries, and 3 ticks profit targets. and i'm more than happy to hear that backtesting is the shit from all kinds of prop shops, fund managers and avg joes shmoes. god please, let them all trade everything which is not backtested and traded live for 3 months.
thanks to everyone who tried to answer my questions. however no one answered this part: Do most of you program your strategies in a software and then execute those strategies in a different platform? Or is your platform integrated for back testing and then automated order executions? I see that trade station allows you to do that, but I don't want to commit to trade station. As far as I can tell, you can't demo trade station unless you become a customer first and I'm not so keen on that. Any suggestions on other platforms besides metatrader? Also, is it necessary to have your back testing software integrated into my trading platform? I suppose it wouldn't be if I find that the strategy I was testing turns out to not be profitable
You have to start from somewhere, don't expect to build on your own Citadel-quality infrastructure, Goldman-quality research results and Ren-Tech algos at the same time. Not even these big boys try to do everything. Start backtesting with Excel, trade manually and as time passes you'll see what you really want to automate more and whatnot.
I backtest to optimise. I have done it for MAs, indicators etc but now mostly backtest in order to optimise stoplosses (let's face it with some instruments particularly if they are a little more volatile you may need a stoploss that allows you to stay in the trade and catch that profit). For my backtesting I use Updata's TraderPro. Pretty powerful TA platform and most of the tests are built in though you are free to code your own or ammend the ones that are already on there. Chart Lion