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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical Analysis - Beginners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: big run who wrote (9431)	2/17/1999 11:12:00 PM
From: Richard Estes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12039

He meant back testing, it does not provide the detail or the flexibility of a MSWIN or TF+. Remember testing can not mirror reality, even the best software fails here. The importance of testing is to determine which system does the best job in fitting your style/needs/mindset. If you plan on the short term, why look at an average holding period of 6 months. The longer system may make more money but we don't maximise profits. We fit our mindset. Ever hear someone say he keeps data on only 200 stocks, this limits him to their fortunes. Or I only buy stocks in S&P 500 over $30, he misses all those that did not make list or price limit. Ever hear I don't want to hold more than a week or less than a year? Which systems will perform well? which are the best? You need a lot of information over a period of time put against many stocks to find the best one for you. An important measure is the time out of trade. one stock moves 10% in one day, another moves 20% in one month, which stock or the system that finds them is best for the person. If I have time I will put up a metastock system test results.

To: big run who wrote (9431)	2/18/1999 4:17:00 AM
From: bdog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12039

big run, like Richard said... I like to throw a backtest engine on a scan and as I tweak it see if/how past results are affected, I can turn it on with a switch and use the same scan...very simple so far..%gain/ loss with 1,2,5,10 day results, for very short term trades... have not done any elaborate exits yet but I imagine I could with another forward loop that specifies exit parameters... In MS one can only do 1 issue, but in Q+ you can call a prescan that has your specs on the type that you want to trade... ie specific float, price, vol, float turnover, QRS, blah blah Q+ does not have global variables yet so getting % of hits I have to do in a spreadsheet with each hit outputting a 1 or 0 and those are complied... Q+ is way too much fun, it is an awesome piece of code and customer support is great bdog