backtesting on hundreds of stocks in Tradestation

1daytrader · Aug 13, 2006

Hi, does anyone know how to backtest a strategy on hundreds of stocks or even thousands in Tradestation?

Right now the only way I know to backtest a strategy is to apply it to a chart, and change the symbol to see how it performs on different stocks. But this is a very slow way to gather statistics.
:mad:

If anyone knows a better and faster way please help!

Thanks!

psytrade · Aug 13, 2006

your probably better using different software for portfolio level backtesting- amibroker works great for me

Splat · Aug 13, 2006

Unfortunately, Tradestation wont evaluate multiple stocks. You need an addon to Tradestation from Rina to do this:
http://www.rinafinancial.com/

1daytrader · Aug 13, 2006

hi psytrade, I'm trying to backtest on intraday data going back for years. Currently I dont' have the data to use in Amibroker, plus the coding in Amibroker is a little outta my league.

Splat. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

Bob111 · Aug 13, 2006

Quote from 1daytrader:

intraday data going back for years. Currently I dont' have the data to use in Amibroker, plus the coding in Amibroker is a little outta my league.

Doing intraday back testing for hundreds of stocks without programming knowledge is impossible imho.
besides amibroker wealth-lab can do portfolio back testing, but you still need a data for it. qcharts+qcollector works for me. all above mentioned software have free trial.

IGolf · Aug 13, 2006

Quote from Bob111:

Doing intraday back testing for hundreds of stocks without programming knowledge is impossible imho.
besides amibroker wealth-lab can do portfolio back testing, but you still need a data for it. qcharts+qcollector works for me. all above mentioned software have free trial.

Trade Ideas is coming out with something called Odds Maker which does intra day backtesting or odds calculations on an unlimited number of stocks. I read it on their blog http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/2006/08/q-with-odds-maker-beta-release.html. They said in beta it will be free to all anyone using their stuff.

1daytrader · Aug 13, 2006

I know a little VB but it's limited. The easylanguage in Tradestation was fairly easy to pick up and write a strategy. It's just hard to test a large sample of stocks to optimize. I guess to truly do everything I need to do is to write the codes my self with VB and my own data. I'm gonna check out qcharts. Thanks Bob.

Igolf, the link doesn't work. Do you have another one?

dougcs · Aug 14, 2006

I do this often using MacroExpress.

There are a few threads at Tradestation world that explain how to do the testing using this and also other ways using TS alone.

This is one of the threads and a good place to start:

https://www.tradestation.com/Discussions/Topic.aspx?Topic_ID=41468

DS

Bob111 · Aug 14, 2006

check your PM

IGolf · Aug 14, 2006

Quote from 1daytrader:

I know a little VB but it's limited. The easylanguage in Tradestation was fairly easy to pick up and write a strategy. It's just hard to test a large sample of stocks to optimize. I guess to truly do everything I need to do is to write the codes my self with VB and my own data. I'm gonna check out qcharts. Thanks Bob.

Igolf, the link doesn't work. Do you have another one?

Here,

Try it again with this.
http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/2006/08/q-with-odds-maker-beta-release.html

If not just go here and look up Q and A with Odds Maker
http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/