backtesting using excel or anything else?

[katiewc]

Does anyone know how to analyze this in excel, or a program?
Or if someone can write me a program I would be willing to pay.

Basically I have a lot of data in excel format on the open and close of a number of trading days (over 1000). I am trying to find how often this stock has moved up (for example) 5 dollars without a retracement of $1. Anyone know how to do this in Excel or any other program? Any help appreciated. thanks!

 

[Wayne Gibbous]

You should be able to do it in Excel, but a more "universal" backtester program would be able to easily read in Excel .CSV format text files and do any analysis you want.

For example, AmiBroker has a free trial --> http://www.amibroker.com/download.html#amibroker

Or you might look at Wealth-Lab (use to have a free trial), or Esignal, or Worden TeleChart, etc.

 

[katiewc]

thanks i'll give it a shot with amibroker

i dl'd the software but any idea what to google to kidna teach me how to have it backtest what i'm looking for? thanks.

 

[dtrader98]

I think this basically does what you want
(closing data only).



Are you familiar with VBA? It is a bit easier to do it that way.

 

[Sintra]

Excel is good to do backtesting and creating a tradingsheet using some sort of API.
I would not use any form of backtesting program like amibroker. I tried it and even with the help of the helpdesk it sometimes gave wrong signals. You really want to be sure that the program is correct and that you know how every formula is calculated. Amibroker for instance also calculates the correlation by using the stockprices and not the log normal returns....
We(multiple companies) use excel for trading and backtesting. Unless your going to do a 10 year tick analyses or HFT or flash trading then excel is perfect.

Check this out:
http://exceltrader.net/

He's got a free backtest tool(adjustment is needed offcourse).