Whoa, a message on the tradestation thread. My gosh!
boots, yes, you can do all that. I don't use the backtesting functionality any more - I am a reformed system trader ;) - but it has a ton of functionality to do that. End of day, intraday, tick data - whatever you have in any time frame. Re qualifying your 'first trade' etc, end of day closing trade -- yes, you can do that too.
Re historical data from QCHarts - if you want to use Quote.com as your data feed you will need a third party tool. Two actually:
Dynastore - basically it makes Quote.com QFeed data appear to look like DBC data, in real time.
Dynaloader - this allows you to download historical data from the Quote.com servers. Useful for fixing 'data holes'.
Both are available from dynastorelight.com - I use them both and QFeed is my primary data feed for Tradestation and I find it to be great value. Typically QFeed continues to keep on chugging even when QCharts itself has plenty of users mad at it for being locked out. I rarely am without a live Tradestation chart...
PS: If you are a QCharts user now you know how convenient it is to have 'data on demand' - i.e. you don't have to specify up front that you are going to follow a set list of symbols. Tradestation is not like that at all. You need to specify what you are going to capture; download historical data to bring your configuration up to the current day; and continue to capture real time using Dynastore (or another supported feed like PCQuote or DBC itself). If you shut down your machine, lock up, miss a day, etc, you need to fill those data gaps. Omega themselves have a data source called historybank.com which is currently free for filling in gaps. I don't see them promoting it much and would expect they themselves may even offer data services to Tradestation users via their Tradestation.com effort that is not yet live (and which I really have not been following).
Back to today, the data collection component runs 24 hours a day on my @Home connected Windows NT box. Dynastore also runs on that machine. 262 symbols I capture, and I could capture a lot more but I only trade the most liquid stocks, and futures primarily. If you have a choice in the matter I would recommend Windows NT or 2000, they both handle memory so much more efficiently.
Backtesting involves being comfortable with writing rules in their programming language called 'EasyLanguage'. People that are easily intimidating by such things are not good targets for this product. However if you have the skill, or even the inclination and desire to learn, then it isn't that challenging to master at all.
Is there a better solution for less money? I do not know. You might investigate Metastock - I am not familiar with its backtesting (if any) capabilities. I also believe that Ensign has similar capabilities to Tradestation although it may be that the hurdle in becoming proficient on that platform is ever so slightly higher.
Tradestation / Omega received a lot of bad press for the 2000i series of products, deservedly so initially, as they were bug ridden and highly unstable. Having lived through that and now having a reliable tool, I can't imagine using anything else. I still think it draws the nicest looking bars on the planet. The flexibility of the programming language is terrific if you are into such things. Being able to produce compound charts / stacked charts of multiple symbols is something that a lot of products can't do, yet its an incredible boon to productivity if you watch many markets.
Having said all that, the bulk of my analysis requires only a few simple lines and no fancy indicators. I could probably do with out the the tool if I had to.
Is it worth it? Impossible to answer for another person! I guess features (backtesting) are what will guide you.
Best regards
Mike |
