Software advice requested

[moa]

Hi, I'm looking for some advice on software for developing/testing a technical trading system. I'd be very grateful if someone could offer their opinion on the relative merits of the different software available, particularly in light of my comments below.

- the ability to develop for a well-diversified portfolio is important
- flexibility in entry/exit variables, ie not just at bar opens or closes
- the ability to test a portfolio with trade rules and money management as variables
- initially for futures and FX but I could envisage developing for equities at a later stage (are different systems stronger for different asset classes?)
- ease of use (my programming skills aren't the strongest though I expect to learn)
- source and reliability of back data, both day and intraday
- flexibility in adapting existing rules in the software or developing new ones (for example integrating quantitative/statistical measures)
- initially to develop for EOD but with either the capacity to develop for intraday or to easily upgrade to a more advanced version to do this
- finally any experience anyone may have had in trying to run PC based software in Virtual pc for Macs. Or is this a no-no?

Any other ideas/suggestions/tips from anyone who's gone through this sort of development would be greatly appreciated. Also this seems like a silly question but what have people experienced in terms of length of development time?

Many thanks in advance

 

[rossored]

I think the best thing you can do is have a good review of all the software/data feeds on the site in the "reviews" section.

There are a couple of service providers (futuresource is one) who will do a totally free trial of their software (free as in no c/card details or anything required) for two weeks or so - you choose the service you want to trial, be it FX or indices/whatever your bag is - and they offer a full range of chart options from area charts, OHLC bars and of course candlesticks. The packages naturally include the full range of indicators and although I now use Sierra/Mytrack for my data (superb imo) futuresource was good during the trial (but its not cheap if you decide to go for it). Some packages may be better for EOD than others but I trade intraday so someone else is probably better qualified to answer that.

Can't answer your question ref. virtual pc im afraid, maybe someone else will be able to do that.

Ref development time, in my own experience I learnt very little in the first couple of months (when I was paper trading etc) then found that once I had more of an understanding of the market and was using real money, I began to pick things up much quicker, and I am now at a level (after nearly eight months) where I feel reasonably confident with things, whilst still realising I'm still on the bottom rung of the ladder - this is thanks in no small part to the huge number of incredibly helpful people on this website.


Cheers for now,

 

[wysinawyg]

I've just gone for Metastock with an end of day futures feed from Paritech.

As far as programs go the biggies are Tradestation, Wealth-lab and Metastock.

Metastock is probably the weakest for backtesting and for what you're talking about you'd need a separate add-on that gives the portfolio function, it is more user friendly than Wealth-Lab though (haven't done a proper demo of Tradestation).

Wealth-lab is available on free trial, I didn't like the look of it and never really gave it a go.

Both Metastock and Wealth-lab need an external data feed with the general one being reccomended being e-signal. If you search this board though and their own support site, it's been a bit flakey on european data but is meant to be good for US data.

Tradestation you can either get 2000i (lots of threads on this) which is a bit like the above two or get Tradestation 7 which has an in-built data feed, it requires a monthly subscription of about $100 plus exchange fees if you open a brokerage account with them or $200 without the brokerage.

All of these will do either EoD or intra-day. AFAIK and that is without a great deal of use, Wealth-lab probably has the most functionality overall, but is the hardest to use and will require more thought in the programming. Metastock is the easiest but won't do what you want out of the box although the portfolio tool add-on is meant to be quite good. Tradestation is somewhere inbetween.

wysi

 

[madasafish]

"the ability to develop for a well-diversified portfolio is important
- flexibility in entry/exit variables, ie not just at bar opens or closes
- the ability to test a portfolio with trade rules and money management as variables
- initially for futures and FX but I could envisage developing for equities at a later stage (are different systems stronger for different asset classes?)
- ease of use (my programming skills aren't the strongest though I expect to learn)
- source and reliability of back data, both day and intraday
- flexibility in adapting existing rules in the software or developing new ones (for example integrating quantitative/statistical measures)
- initially to develop for EOD but with either the capacity to develop for intraday or to easily upgrade to a more advanced version to do this
- finally any experience anyone may have had in trying to run PC based software in Virtual pc for Macs. Or is this a no-no?"

I use IRT - can be EOD or RT or both and runs on PCs or MACs(in Mac mode)

And can do all above and you don't need to know any programming : just logic.

eg IF CL>CL.1 and MACD>MACD.1 and FASTD>SLOWD and SLOWD>20and FASTD.1<SLOWD.1 and Cl>MAX(CL.1,50) and ....

just means what it says: if close is greater than prior one, MACD going up etc..

And you have Multiple time frames in same chart - great for day trading or EOD..

www.linnsoft.com

 

[henry766]

i recommend metastock aswell, very user friendly for writing formulas , don't use the backtesting much but i think wysinawyg is right in that it's one chart at a time ( atleast on my slightly dated version)unless you are an expert, i don't think you'll do better !! ( also is well known , has user groups where u can download formulas etc , data easy to come by on this basis aswell!!