Sci I have just read Robo’s reply to your post. Lots of good info there and refs to web sites etc that I would encourage you to use. The following was written prior to me seeing Robo’s post but I thought I’d still post it anyway.
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Sci I wouldn’t say that you would be at a disadvantage by not being able to write code, but it certainly would be an advantage. If you managed to perform backtesting using Excel then I don’t think you’ll have any problems with Amibroker.
When I started charting I used Metastock and through the years I developed and coded a lot of indicators and templates for the various systems I was interested in. A few years back when Metastock decided to force all their customers to use Reuters Datalink, they were owned by Reuters back then, and after having a number of problems connecting to their one data server, combined with licencing problems I had when trying to move Metastock to a new PC, I decided to bite the bullet and move to an alternative platform. That’s when I found Amibroker. The key for me was the fact the Amibroker vector/array type of coding was identical to that of Metastock, so it was very easy for me to move my indicators and templates to Amibroker. Combined with this I could use my existing Metastock formatted stock database and data subscriptions with Amibroker. Amibroker also allows you to combine the standard vector/array coding with traditional sequential loop coding which for me was a big advantage at the time.
I’m pretty sure Amibroker doesn’t have any preloaded, i.e. directly after software installation, systems and portfolios like VectorVest has. However, there’s heaps of free stuff on the internet for Amibroker, videos and indicator and system code etc. A good place to start would be the blueowlpress.com site where you can download a free copy of Howard Bandy’s book: “Introduction to Amibroker”. The book’s “Chapter 3 – 30 Minutes to Useful Results” walks you through most of what you can do in Amibroker; i.e. from drawing a trend line to backtesting and scanning and system optimisation. Whenever I am made aware of a system or an indicator that I wasn’t previously familiar with I always do a google search on the indicator name and include “Amibroker” or “afl” in the search. I have found that generally someone else has coded the indicator or system and made it available to others.
I had a subscription for VectorVest for a few years as well. I wanted to include some FA in my market filtering but the cost of the yearly subscription outweighed the very limited benefit so I didn’t continue with it.
The systems I am interested in are also EOD systems. I intend to set up all my conditional orders based on scans of the EOD data each night. The scans will use my system rules and the conditional orders will be “If-Done” with a pair of “One Cancels the Other” (OCO) orders. So if the order condition is met Iress will place a buy, or sell if going short, order in the market and if that order is successful it will then place my profit exit and stop exit orders on the market. The slippage that I would expect is in the actual market buy and sell prices. The backtester simply selects the best case for these buy and sell prices. The Montecarlo analysis that I was referring to would take all the trades that the backtester found and then vary the buy and sell prices by relatively small percentages on a totally random basis and run the simulation thousands of times. The final results would then be presented in a statistical form. Then using the statistics you can get a better idea of what to expect from your system when you go live.
It would be a bit misleading of me not to reply to your question re is Amibroker more of an advanced system builder for experts. Yes, Amibroker in my opinion is the software of choice for anyone wanting to develop advanced and complicated systems. But it does all of the standard stuff really well as well. There are parts of the functionality that I will never use. The latest updates to Amibroker functionality are in the area of matrix algebra, i.e. all of the linear algebra stuff that machine learning algorithms rely on. I think these upgrades are in anticipation of third party developers developing plugins that will incorporate machine learning directly into Amibroker functionality.
Well enough of me going on about how much I like Amibroker. I know that it is always a difficult and lengthy learning curve when you move to a new charting software platform, but for me the move to Amibroker was the best choice I could have made. Good luck in your system development efforts Sci. There isn’t that much talk on HC re Trading Systems which for me is a bit disappointing. If you have any more question or if I can help you in any way just tag me a post and I would be happy to reply.
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