Backtesting Software
Hello All,
For all those which backtest their ideas before committing real money to them, can I ask what methods & software you use to perform this?
Just interested...
Chorlton
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It depends on what you are trying to back test. I went through a phase of back testing everything to pieces and I used Tradestation 2000i to do this. I don't back test any more but I still use the same software which, even though others are telling me is old and limited in use, is still one of the best on the market in my view. It also works with Vista which is a big bonus for a package written back in the last millenium.
Paul
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trader333 View Post
It depends on what you are trying to back test. I went through a phase of back testing everything to pieces and I used Tradestation 2000i to do this. I don't back test any more but I still use the same software which, even though others are telling me is old and limited in use, is still one of the best on the market in my view. It also works with Vista which is a big bonus for a package written back in the last millenium.
Paul
Hi Paul,
"It depends on what you are trying to back test"
Can I ask why this would make a difference?
Out of interest, I trade Stocks & use MS for my charting but have recently purchased TradeSim for backtesting as it seems to be one of only a few that can perform Monte Carlo Analysis.
I was just interested in what others were using in comparison......
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chorlton View Post
For all those which backtest their ideas before committing real money to them, can I ask what methods & software you use to perform this?
This may not be a useful reply as I'm not yet trading the 'stuff' that I'm developing. I trade UK stocks with play money but I'm in the long process of developing my own system for a different instrument, and I'm some way from going live yet.
To your question, for system exploration and backtesting I'm writing my own code. It's fairly low level - just plain C with no libraries, APIs or fancy pants like that - and just reads historical intraday data from a .csv file.
The beauty of writing your own code is the freedom it gives you, including possibly the potential to explore things in ways that the standard packages don't support. Then again I haven't used the standard packages, so they might do everything for all I know. Doing it yourself also forces you into the data and the analysis which I feel has benefits of its own. I also just enjoy it.
The downside is the time it takes and the occasional difficulty in implementing your ideas.