Tradestation Users - Newbie Question

Quote from intradaybill:
The most important aspect of trading after you have a profitable method is risk and money management. There is plenty of information available for free that you should read over and over again before risking a single dime. Here are some examples:

http://tradermike.net/2005/07/position_sizing/

http://www.priceactionlab.com/Literature/PositionSizing.pdf

Automation is good only if someone understands well risk and position management. [/B]


Intradaybill, thanks so much for the links. I have books on the way Do you also use similar position sizing strategy in your longer-term accts (if you have them)? I've never heard much about position sizing outside of trading forums. The most I've seen is get about 15-20 stocks spread across industries in fairly equal amts to gain benefit of diversification to reduce market risk It's not talked about much by Buffett, Lynch, Fisher, Greenblatt or other stock guys I read.
 
Quote from smili:
bstay, if I may ask based on your familiarity - part of the ideas I have for trading involve first and second derivatives of price action - first derivatives: the changing slopes of the price action and second derivatives: acceleration and deceleration. I've worked with these some in XLS and it seems there are certain realms where it is "safer" than others based on combinations of these characteristics. From what you know of easylanguage are these "rates of change" calculations supported (like a tangent to an Simple moving average curve?) (the ability to compare say MA10 now vs. MA10 1 period ago, 2 period ago, etc?)
you can write to TradeStation on those questions (email is free) and you get expert advise rather than merry-go-round on forums. what i think is you should have a working profitable "method" of trading first, at least you know it's profitable when you traded manually, then you look to automate your strategies. heck, you can even pay someone to write codes in EasyLanguage. check out the free tutorials for EasyLanguage at http://markplex.com/tutorials.php . you can use their services or you can choose to spend months/years writing your own scripts. but the tutorials should give you idea what TradeStation can do. within the TradeStation customer forum area, there are links to other 3rd-party consultants too.

P.S.: have you taken into account 9:30amEST gaps on stocks during intraday? moving averages like 10ma or 10ema don't work right off market open due to gaps and only catches up couple hours later. have you manually traded this idea to see that it makes money?
 
Quote from bstay:

P.S.: have you taken into account 9:30amEST gaps on stocks during intraday? moving averages like 10ma or 10ema don't work right off market open due to gaps and only catches up couple hours later. have you manually traded this idea to see that it makes money?

eod is all I've worked with up to this point. I've never traded intraday

thanks for the info.
 
Quote from smili:
eod is all I've worked with up to this point. I've never traded intraday
thanks for the info.
as intradaybill said earlier in the thread, learn to walk before asking how to fly. i'm unsubscribed now, here's picture of intraday gap with the 10ma and 10ema. you see these gaps much too often everyday.
 

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Quote from smili:

Intradaybill, thanks so much for the links. I have books on the way Do you also use similar position sizing strategy in your longer-term accts (if you have them)? I've never heard much about position sizing outside of trading forums. The most I've seen is get about 15-20 stocks spread across industries in fairly equal amts to gain benefit of diversification to reduce market risk It's not talked about much by Buffett, Lynch, Fisher, Greenblatt or other stock guys I read.

I started as an intraday futures trader with no solid concept of risk and money management. I was very lucky in the beginning and I built a cushion that helped me when the bad times arrived. I decided to shift to position trading because I realized I cannot fight MMs and automated robots. I still trade some intraday and I risk no more than 0.25% of bankroll on each trade. Positions are sized at 1% maximum. Under some extraordinary circumstances I go up to 2%. Managing risk is second most important aspect of trading. The first is coming up with an edge. Note that the two are related.
 
Quote from bstay:
you see these gaps much too often everyday.

I'm sure there's a ton I'll have to learn to work around as I move to looking at intraday data. I am a learner though, and my work has taught me that solid well-thought "process" saves me from 95% of the things that can go wrong. To this degree automation appeals to me, but like you say - I gotta learn the correct processes to automate before I get to that point. The gaps like you show are some of the things I want to do some studies around.
 
Followup. just wanted to thank everybody who gave me suggestions to check out.

I went ahead and got Amibroker to start building out some strategies. I'm still learning the amibroker AFL language, but I like the program so far. I got the Intro to Amibroker book by Howard Bandy which has been a very good reference/guide up to this point.

I'm currently using eod data to learn the programming and backtesting, but may purchase some intraday data once I'm more comfortable with the programming.

Ultimately plan to migrate to IB using the Amibroker API to interface when the time is right for realtime - either that or purchase some realtime feeds.

thanks again for all replies and suggestions. It helped me check out lots of good alternatives.
 
Quote from smili:

I went ahead and got Amibroker to start building out some strategies. I'm still learning the amibroker AFL language, but I like the program so far.

Excellent choice at a reasonable price. I also plan to migrate all my strategies to Amibroker. AFL is powerful and flexible. There are also a few user groups you can get good help from.
 
I have a problem with text_delete in easy language.
I need to update a text so I check for its existence, then delete it by text_delete and finally write the new text by text_new.
The problem is text_delete fails sometimes and from that point on all text disappears.

Any thoughts?
 
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