How do I learn how to back test?

Quote from gotta_trade:


Question:

How does a person who's not safisticated in the area of back testing go about doing it?

Do I just put the time and effort in Wealth Lab and figure out?

Is there a Back Testing for Dummies book, or any other book, that would lay a basic foundation for me?

What does TradeStation do? Is it the same type of thing?

Are there other programs and/or websites that serve the same purpose?

Basically, how do I go about learning how to back test different trading ideas? Where do I begin?


Thank You,
gotta_trade
More...

My previous post had troubles and somehow part of it got left out.

Wealth Lab and Tradestation are similar in that both are toolkits and do not do much unless you program them. However, they come with many preprogrammed studies that are useful and serve also as examples.

I use Tradestation, so I will discuss it.

It comes with some good tutorials. They also run seminars in different cities, you have to pay for these. It has a number of support mechanisms. You are able to hire programmers. There is www.tradestationworld.com where there is lot of useful information and forums where you are able to post questions and usually quickly get back very good answers either from TS employees or users.

There are a few books available on programming it.

Also, there are an email discussion listserv, private websites, a Yahoo Group or two, etc where many indicators and other types of studies are available as well as the usual Q&A and BS that goes on in these types of things.

As far as learning, if you have some programming background, it is fairly easy to learn. If not, then you may have a steep learning curve.

Where to start? I seem to remember a discussion on this in one of the other forums and the general consensus was to start by taking a simple idea and program it. As you learn, add complexity. Learning by doing seems best. You might select your platform and take one of the courses (I'm not sure if WealthLab or the others have them.)

I think TS has a free 30 day trial.

Good luck.
DS
 
if you want stick with TS (dont know much about current versions) but 2000i come with simple examples(i did mentioned before)-like- MA crossover-you simply add this strategy and review generated report. you may try to change paramethers, try to optimize it. then at some point you may want to step into programming code for this particular system. it is very easy to do. i'm pretty sure, that if you use help you will figure out what it all about. if you put cursor on functions and press F1-help will pop up and explain what it for. you ask for second time-where to start-just open it play with it. if you stuck somewhere-then ask.
looks like-you ask the questions before you even try this. BTW-if you search deep enough on internet-i'm pretty sure that you will find Tradestation Prosuite 2000i for free.
 
Quote from gotta_trade:

Hi Everyone,

I am not familiar with "back testing" trading strategies.

Question:

How does a person who's not safisticated in the area of back testing go about doing it?

Is there a Back Testing for Dummies book, or any other book, that would lay a basic foundation for me?
More...
Read "Trading Systems and Methods" by Kaufman and "Trading Systems That Work" by Stridsman. Both have extensive coverage of backtesting strategies.

Good luck.
 
As you can see you simply need software. Some you have to program, others you don't. Either way the system trader wants to see if an idea has validity before moving forward. I use Tradestation also.
 
Quote from dougcs:



My previous post had troubles and somehow part of it got left out.

Wealth Lab and Tradestation are similar in that both are toolkits and do not do much unless you program them. However, they come with many preprogrammed studies that are useful and serve also as examples.

I use Tradestation, so I will discuss it.

It comes with some good tutorials. They also run seminars in different cities, you have to pay for these. It has a number of support mechanisms. You are able to hire programmers. There is www.tradestationworld.com where there is lot of useful information and forums where you are able to post questions and usually quickly get back very good answers either from TS employees or users.

There are a few books available on programming it.

Also, there are an email discussion listserv, private websites, a Yahoo Group or two, etc where many indicators and other types of studies are available as well as the usual Q&A and BS that goes on in these types of things.

As far as learning, if you have some programming background, it is fairly easy to learn. If not, then you may have a steep learning curve.

Where to start? I seem to remember a discussion on this in one of the other forums and the general consensus was to start by taking a simple idea and program it. As you learn, add complexity. Learning by doing seems best. You might select your platform and take one of the courses (I'm not sure if WealthLab or the others have them.)

I think TS has a free 30 day trial.

Good luck.
DS
More...

DS what books can you recommend to learn easy language
 
Quote from gotta_trade:


Do I just put the time and effort in Wealth Lab and figure out?
More...

imo, yes. if i didn't roll my own testing software i'd use WealthLab, it is an excellent and relatively easy to use platform.

to backtest you're going to need some basic programming skills and some basic understanding of math, especially statistics. if you don't really have much programming experience you should consider taking an intro to programming type course at a local community college (or wherever). it doesn't matter what language they teach, it's the process you're interested in.
 
Quote from dougcs:



I've not used any, but this one seems to get good reviews and comments from people that have it:

http://www.traderspress.org/detail.asp?product_id=1494

DS
More...
oh boy...this book..totally bs.
i would not recomend this book to anyone. i did order it, review it and send it back right away. TS manual contain 10 times more info than this book.
here-
http://www.tradestationsupport.com/resources/books/pdf/EL_Ref_Guide.pdf


just save some money for your kids.
more than enough to start.
 
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