In general, I have found Amibroker's optimization feature pretty quick. Using a pentium 4 2.8ghz, most optimizations take a minute at max - for one security.
With that said, optimizing about 66000 runs of 5 years of EOD data can take about half an hour if I recall.
Personally, I have not found optimizing a particular system to a great deal of accuracy across a group of securities to be that helpful. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I would rather get a general idea of how a system works across the market and then refine it to the individual security, than just apply it brute force to an individual security.
I think that you can get as good data on a prospective basis by adjusting your parameters and then zeroing in on subsequent analyses, as the other poster said. For example, perhaps you are using a double moving average system with a stop loss. Instead of running the system with each moving average parameter from 1 to 300 by increments of 1, and the stop loss from 0-20% in increments of .1; run it from 1-300 by 2's and the stops by 2.0%. I doubt you will lose any significant information if the system is to be ultimately profitable. If it looks good, narrow in the parameters.
A while ago, I along with some of the other Amibroker people on the User's group wrote an auto-optimizing exploration. It basically goes through your ticker list and runs whatever system you care to use and then filters out the profitable ones, or ones with high % of winning trades, or ones with low drawdowns, or whatever you wish. It was cute.
Is that what you are looking for? PM me if you are and I will cc you the code.
Faster is always better but over-optimization is the path to destruction. Fortunately, if you know how to use Ami, you have some powerful tools to prevent you from making that mistake and choosing more robust systems.
Good luck.
