Deciding on a Backtesting and Trading Platform

Quote from TraderSystem:
Interesting comments indeed! Although, the price, demo and manual may affect the choice, but are they really important?
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Hello TraderSystem,
You're right about the price, demo and printed manuals not being significant concerns. More importantly, these kinds of concerns are distracting from what is really important and can create an unfounded sense of distrust that isn't warranted.

I've talked about price earlier and it seems to be in line with what the developer was thinking. As for the manuals, it doesn't make a lot of sense to create printed manuals for software any longer. Long gone are the days when a software package appeared and remained stagnant in the trading business. It doesn't make sense because the software changes so much and so quickly, that software that doesn't change and keep up disappears from the market.

In the case of TradersStudio the improvement transformation over the last couple of years has been significant and important. Whatever printed manuals might have been available at a revision release would have certainly needed revision before long because of the software advances. For certain in the old days when the HELP system available was clumsy, slow and barely useful, manuals were important, but today that has changed. Today we have a tremendous Help process in the Windows OS environment that is capable of covering lot of information and can be updated and downloaded as the changes in the software appear. In both the printed manual and digital Help approach there can be holes, but those can be more easily addressed and fixed with the developers in a digital format than in a printed book. Because of the digital approach has the ability to be quickly updated, I don't buy or recommend manuals any longer.

Quote from TraderSystem:
What about the language and programming issues? What about the speed and security issues?
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TradersStudio language is the Visual Basic language extended to provide a simple to implement trading jargon that creates functionality. Anyone who has any feel for programming in any form of Basic, or recent programming language for that matter, shouldn't need much of a learning curve to get comfortable with TradersStudio Basic.

When TradersStudio is installed it also installs three extensive Help files. The first is for the TradersStudio itself. The second manual is for the TradersStudio Basic language and the last manual is for the TradersStudio Editor. In all three Help files there is a tremendous amount of information, and the TradersStudio Basic Help file is assembled as an programmer would want to see the information with a lot of indexing so things are easy to find. There are also sample systems installed with the software you can copy, edit or just learn from the sample for those who are not sure of how to get started.

TradersStudio testing Speed isn't a of a problem on my machine (Dual Intel 3.2 GHz XEON CPUs w/Win XP PRO 2GHx memory). It is important to understand all trading platforms need CPU horsepower and large memory pools to function. Where either of these go lacking, they can only be made up with user patience. For trading system builders, the last place to be overly frugal is with the choice of trading platform or the performance of the computer.

I didn't understand your security question, so maybe you can ask it a different way.
 
When TradersStudio was first introduced I wasn't a fan of their Easy Language Migration tool. However, a lot has changed over the years since then and with Murray’s comment above, I thought I would go back and test it again.

In the past translations made for a lot of work and didn’t go well for me, however when I translated a complete trading system a few minutes ago with the latest version of the Migration Tool, I didn't find any mistakes in the translation, and only found some of the formatting to be off, which isn't a real problem.

So others can see a small sample of what the TradersStudio Basic looks like when compared to the TradeStation Easy Language, a small snippet of the translated system showing the same sections of code are pasted below.

TradeStation Code:
Code: 
  VolatilityFilter = ROUND(TrendFilter2 / TotalTrueRange, 2);
  VolatilityValue = ROUND((TotalTrueRange / RangFilt) * BigPointValue, 2);
 
  IF TrendFilter1 > 0 AND
     VolatilityFilter >= TrendEff AND
     VolatilityValue <= ( MoneyStp * VolaFilt ) THEN
       LongSetUpOk = TRUE;
   ELSE
     LongSetUpOk = FALSE;
 
  IF TrendFilter1 < 0 AND
     VolatilityFilter <= TrendEff * -1 AND
     VolatilityValue <= ( MoneyStp * VolaFilt ) THEN
       ShortSetUpOk = TRUE;
   ELSE
     ShortSetUpOk = FALSE;
 
{  ---------------------------------------------------------------------  }
{  --                      TRADE ENTRY                                --  }
{  ---------------------------------------------------------------------  }
 
  IF LongSetUpOk AND MarketPosition <> 1 THEN
    BEGIN
     BuyPrice = HIGH + Range;
 
     BUY("Vol.Tam-Buy") AT BuyPrice STOP;
 
     EXITLong("Init VT L-Exit") BuyPrice - StopOffSet STOP;
    END;
 
 
  IF ShortSetUpOk AND MarketPosition <> -1 THEN
    BEGIN
      SellPrice = Low - Range;
 
      SELL("Vol.Tam-Sell") AT SellPrice STOP;
 
      EXITShort("Init VT S-Exit") SellPrice + StopOffSet STOP;
    END;
TradersStudio Migration Translation:
Code: 
    VolatilityValue = ROUND((TotalTrueRange / RangFilt) * BigPointValue, 2)
    IF TrendFilter1 > 0 AND    VolatilityFilter >= TrendEff AND   VolatilityValue <= (MoneyStp * VolaFilt) THEN
        LongSetUpOk = TRUE
    ELSE
        LongSetUpOk = FALSE
    END IF
    IF TrendFilter1 < 0 AND    VolatilityFilter <= TrendEff * -1 AND   VolatilityValue <= (MoneyStp * VolaFilt) THEN
        ShortSetUpOk = TRUE
    ELSE
        ShortSetUpOk = FALSE
    END IF
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
'--           TRADE ENTRY                --
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
    IF LongSetUpOk AND MarketPos(0)<> 1 THEN
        BuyPrice = HIGH + Range
        Buy("Vol.Tam-Buy", 1, BuyPrice, STOP, Day)
        ExitLong("Init VT L-Exit", "", 1, BuyPrice - StopOffSet, STOP, Day)
    END IF
    IF ShortSetUpOk AND MarketPos(0)<> -1 THEN
        SellPrice = Low - Range
        Sell("Vol.Tam-Sell", 1, SellPrice, STOP, Day)
        ExitShort("Init VT S-Exit", "", 1, SellPrice + StopOffSet, STOP, Day)
    END IF
END SUB
Except for loosing some of the formatting and not implementing line continuation markers “_” to wrap the code, the translation didn't create any errors that showed up with a casual glance.

Working with the Migration Tool was fairly easy, but it requires the person using it to know and understand the code they are translating, and to know what is meant when the translator ask the user which variables need to be series variables, or which variables need to be bar variables. It also requires the user to know that the remaining variables not declared as series variables will assume to be Functions. In the translation case, only one variable was used as a series, so all the other variables in the system were shown when the Function question was asked. Had a person not known their code this would have been confusing. It would have been better for the translator to mention how it arrived at the Function question so it wouldn’t alarm the user. Still, the Help manual is there to help the user get through this, so we are talking about dandruff type issues and not matters of material concern.

All in all I was impressed at how well the translation went. From start to stop less than 5-minutes transpired and almost all of that time was consumed by my need to review the Easy Language code in the TradeStation Editor so I didn't make a mistake about the series array question. Actual machine translation took less than a couple of seconds and when it was done it provided an options to save the translation as a Text file and also save it to TradersStudio where it shows up as an available trading system.
 
Regards Roger, your posts were interesting.

The manual part was interesting. Actually, what I meant was that this is not the only criteria for selecting a product. Maybe you have a point, but I feel manuals are important.

Since, companies do not sell printed manuals any more, a third party can do it. There is a market for "Printed Book", "Step by Step", "Tutorial Guides" and "courses", have become important. One example is about 500 titles for Excel only on Amazon site.

So, if printed Tutorial guides are not worthy and not wanted why would the book companies publish so many of them?

Regarding the security question, it means that “If the product is an on line product, then the question is does the vendor have access to your trading systems? Should you worry about that?”
 
I fully agree with TraderSystem, regarding the manuals. Frankly speaking, if it were not for these manuals, it would have not been so easy for me to grasp the concepts so clearly and get as to what really sets TradersStudio apart from others.

I will be walking though the software over the next set of review posts; wherein I shall cover many issues.

Hence, if you have any questions regarding TradersStudio, please do submit them in the next day or so, I shall try my best to get them answered.
 
Quote from TraderSystem:
The manual part was interesting. Actually, what I meant was that this is not the only criteria for selecting a product. Maybe you have a point, but I feel manuals are important.
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If I’ve given the impression that I didn’t feel manuals were important, than I apologize because I believe strongly that they are critical component part of the software. In my case I don’t feel a need to have printed manuals, but instead would prefer to have the software’s information in a Windows’ HELP (chm – file format structure) than in a printed or even a PDF form of manual. My bias towards HELP files is rooted in their ability to provide a Search feature and support live-links to follow-on or related materials and topics. Usually when I need to look at a software manual I’m trying to solve a problem so I can most often enter a term in the Search box and see what appears. This sure beats an Index, that often isn’t complete, and in some cases not accurate.

Quote from TraderSystem:Since, companies do not sell printed manuals any more, a third party can do it. There is a market for "Printed Book", "Step by Step", "Tutorial Guides" and "courses", have become important. One example is about 500 titles for Excel only on Amazon site.
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I can’t imagine a software vendor wouldn’t provide a printed manual if they were asked and were compensated for the limited printing of a single set, but maybe they won’t. If a vendor provides a PDF file, then that is an easy way to get a manual. In a couple of cases with specialty software I’ve had the local print shop create a spiral bound manual from the supplied PDF. In both cases I assumed there wouldn’t be any software updates, in both cases there hasn’t been any changes. They also didn’t provide a HELP file with the software, so having paper that I could put Post-It notes on pages made that approach workable.

Quote from TraderSystem:So, if printed Tutorial guides are not worthy and not wanted why would the book companies publish so many of them?
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After reading this if you were referring to “How-To” manuals previously then I missed your intent. Most of the developers provide “How-To Get Started” tutorials that usually get people moving around in the software, but there don’t often take much more than a simple system approach to making one thing work. Most often the concepts in the Get Started tutorial don’t take people too far, so users must be willing to be persistent and keep trying, making mistakes, asking question and over time make progress. Not an elegant approach to building customer confidence, but that seems to be the case at the moment.

So, if you were always referring to “How-To” manuals, then I see those as the “Missing-Link” in almost all the software developers’ arsenals. I don’t understand why they don’t invest in generating more of that kind of information, but then again maybe the people who gravitate towards software development in the financial markets don’t understand that if people knew how to use their software more successfully and sooner they would be better customers who would attract others to join them in their efforts. It would also reduce the amount of customer churning that seems to go on in the industry where users buy one package, can’t get it to do what they want so go looking for something easier.
Quote from TraderSystem:Regarding the security question, it means that “If the product is an on line product, then the question is does the vendor have access to your trading systems? Should you worry about that?” [/B]
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I don’t worry about that point because I won’t use anything that would leave me that vulnerable. Other than Fidelity, are you seeing that as a trend in the industry?
 
First Part of the Set of “Review of TradersStudio”

TradersStudio Concepts Part 1

Now, here comes the review of the TradersStudio. Firstly, I would like to thank Mr. Murray for sparing time to explain my doubts and questions. He took many pains to explain me the details and the power of TradersStudio.

His patience and feedback in explaining me the details impressed me. The amazing part was that he himself approached to help me instead of the other way round. His explanations have made me see what TradersStudio can do.

It shall look that I am spending more time with TradersStudio. However, I would like to put this across the record, that till date Mr. Murray was the only one who offered to help me directly (he did so via PM) and not the other way around.

Although, I admit that I got help for the other software, but the help was restricted to the emails and help through forums. Thus, I could not get a very deep understanding of the other products as I could get with TradersStudio just because Mr. Murray’s’ help. The personnel of other software could have helped me out or offered me more help.

In the following paragraphs, am mentioning the issues had addressed to him and his explanations. Moreover, I shall be posting the review in around over 4-5 posts for the convenience of all of you.

Now, I am going to overview my meeting with Mr. Murray and our discussion regarding the product (TradersStudio). Mr. Murray had mentioned that he would be doing an “On-Line Seminar on TradersStudio for Elite Traders members” very soon. I hope that he does that soon as it shall greatly help people understand the product.

1) He even commented on the reasons for not offering a free demo and convinced me as to how offering a “free demo” is not worthwhile, if the Technical support is missing. Since, without the support, you miss out the helpful, useful and maybe even the powerful features of any product (not just TradersStudio).

2) A point that Mr. Murray pointed out before proceeding with the demo with me was the “Core Concept behind the software TradersStudio”. It has two layers, which are as follows:

The first one is the “Session Layer”, which is “a (one) system and a set of parameters on one or more markets”.

The second one is the “Trade Plan Layer”, which allows multiple sessions to run one bar at a time and pass information between them using a type of Object based programming method, (just like Excel). Moreover, Sessions run one market at a time.

Hence, when you put a session in a Trade Plan, it runs one bar at a time in parallel and this is the “real power of TradersStudio” in the area of applying Money Management.

3) Just to inform you all, that I have a programming background in Visual Basic 6.0 version, therefore did not really find the TradersStudio language tough. Moreover, it is a general view that if you are aware of any of these languages: Visual Basic 6.0 or its earlier version, EasyLanguage or Excel VBA, you shall be able to do programming in TradersStudio quickly and easily. It is not tough provided your programming basics are clear.

4) Unfortunately, not all traders are programmers, so it might be difficult and problematic. However, TradersStudio has a solution for this. It offers a programming wizard wherein you can create system, indicators, and macros by just using the drag and drop features and filling up of the templates. Instructions for the same are given. The wizard has a basic set of templates. Moreover, you can create your own templates.

However, it would be very nice if they could provide more templates especially in the basic package. Mr. Murray has assured that he shall be making more available. Moreover, the Wizard is good enough for the beginners and the intermediate system developers but not for the advanced ones.

It is different from the Trading Blox Programming wizard. It has more power as you can create and develop your own ideas from within the wizard. However, the Trading Blox has more built in templates.

5) I have noticed during my research of TradersStudio that some people complain about its speed. However, in running the demo with Mr. Murray, it did not seem to be the case. Both the Trading Blox and TradersStudio were about the same speed, however, I do admit that I shall not know for sure until I test TradersStudio on my own computer.

To Be Continued....
 
Nice review, Gyles, but there is a question relating to the language used by TradersStudio. Have found out that it uses a “Easylanguage” language; which is not exactly VB.

What is it? Is this a new language? Why TradersStudio not use any other languages like C, C++, VB, .NET etc? Also, you had mentioned that you know VB and you could learn the language easily. Please explain.
 
Quote from TraderSystem:

Nice review, Gyles, but there is a question relating to the language used by TradersStudio. Have found out that it uses a “Easylanguage” language; which is not exactly VB.

What is it? Is this a new language? Why TradersStudio not use any other languages like C, C++, VB, .NET etc? Also, you had mentioned that you know VB and you could learn the language easily. Please explain.
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I don't know the full answer to this. Only the vendor could do that. TS Basic isn't visual basic in the way people have been referring to here. I believe that it's actually an evolved version of Basic - kind of Visual Basic without the "visual" part. Certainly, it is alot closer to VB than it is to Easylanguage.

Personally, i think they've treaded the path of relative Easylanguage compatibility, without constraining themselves, reasonably well. I also believe they have a long term plan to move to VB.NET but don't quote me on that. If they implement the VB.NET platform then question alluding to ultimate programatic power will be answered. In fact, when set against your query about ease of learning the point about "advanced" languages strikes me as odd. If you would prefer advanced power language (more difficult to learn) support then why are you concerned about the difficulty of learning TS Basic?

IMHO, people are over playing these language issues. Is this language easy to learn? Yes, I learned it and knew nothing about VB at the time. Does it have utility to traders (important)? Definite yes. TS basic has a number of built-in functions and objects that save a hell of alot of work and effort - more than most people realise. Does it both support and enhance the flexibility and power of the platform? Yes. I didn't expect much from it at first (only cost $500 after all) but generally I've been surprised and impressed.

I use Tradersstudio as my core backtesting platform. It does what i need very wll at the price. Crucially though, I am impressed by the company's plans both in terms of platform and language. They are both ambitious and realistic and i like that. So anyone who buys this now can feel some comfort knowing they're jumping aboard a ship going somewhere worthwhile.
 
fundjunkie, your post was very enlightening, thanks for the same. :)

However, I would like to ask you a few questions:

a) Do you have any contract with Mr. Murray? I am asking this as I have found him very helpful and patient in my review.

b) Moreover, why do you feel that the language of TradersStudio is more like VB and EasyLangage, when actually it is a cross between the two?
 
Quote from Gyles:

fundjunkie, your post was very enlightening, thanks for the same.

However, I would like to ask you a few questions:

a) Do you have any contract with Mr. Murray? I am asking this as I have found him very helpful and patient in my review.
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Occasionally, though my views of the product haven't been formed on the same basis as yours. We seem to be in general agreement though.

b) Moreover, why do you feel that the language of TradersStudio is more like VB and EasyLangage, when actually it is a cross between the two? [/B]
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Structurally and syntactically it is a Basic, of sorts, but there are echos of Easylanguage in there. I think it depends on what you emphasise as you experience of the language. I could understand someone thinking that it's Easylanguage in a different guise but I think they'd be putting the cart before the horse to go that far. In fact, if I thought that it "was" easylanguage that would have been a deterrant to me buying the product in the first place. That said, I am not a development pro and don't want to step too far into waters too deep for me;)
 
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