TradeStation vs. MetaStock

Pan2004,

I apologize if I slighted AmiBroker. That was not my intention.

So, just how many days of tick does 500,000 data points correspond to. Can I do my one year back test on an actively traded stock like Intel or Microsoft? I am no expert at backtesting, but it seems that ability to do a simple one year tick data test should be a very fundamental feature of a backtesting system.

But, maybe I am wrong. No one seems to be capable of doing this.

And, why do I keep running into these artificial limitations in software. If I can drive five miles from my office and buy a terabyte of storage, why can't I fill it with data and run tests on the data? Processing power is not a problem. I can do a 30 day test with tick data on TS in a few minutes. It seems to me that a well written program would not have such limitations.

Norm
 
Quote from Norm:

So, just how many days of tick does 500,000 data points correspond to.
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Unlike minute bars, whereby there's a fixed number of bars per day, tick charts will vary with market activity. Overnight you may get 2 ticks in a half hour but during a fed announcement you 'll get more ticks in one minute than you'd get in a week of ovenight sessions
 
Quote from Norm:

Spike500 ,

Can you tell me how you managed to accumulate so much tick data. When I queried TS support about this, they only responded by saying that it was possible and that I pretty much had to figure it out for myself (such as by scouring the TS discussing forums).

Also, does TS have any real tech support for EasyLanguage. It's my understanding that the only support that my $100 per month buys is the online discussion group, which takes several days and then usually only provide a very cursory response. I would think that for $100 per month, that TS could let me actually talk to someone.

Norm
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I trade the ES since they started. In the beginning i stored all the ticks that came in for research. So for the ES i had 4 files a year. I daytrade but only save data per minute because that's the smallest timeframe i use.
I checked but i have no copy of all the data anymore.
TS support has always been lousy, they will never help you with your problem. You will habe to find people who store the data they use, as i did.
Or you will have to buy data and import it in TS.
 
Pan2004,

I appreciate you detailed analysis. But, the simple truth is that I routinely do backtesting on 30 days of tick data for actively traded stocks using TS. This usually takes about 2 minutes. So, to do a year should take about 24 minutes and can be though of as merely doing twelve 30 day tests in a row. No huge data storage, RAM, or processing power considerations. Not a big deal.

Thanks for letting me know about the registry entry for the number of data points in AmiBroker. I will re-consider it if I have to shop around again.

Norm
 
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