What backtesting software should I get?

qwertyuiop1

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I am a big trader enthusiast - however I am yet to download any software for backtesting.

What software should i get?
Ideally it woiuld be free - but if I need to splash out a few quid for a siuperior product then i'm prepared to do that too.

Basically I want something that's reasonably easy to use that has plenty of historical data.
 
I am a big trader enthusiast - however I am yet to download any software for backtesting.

What software should i get?
Ideally it woiuld be free - but if I need to splash out a few quid for a siuperior product then i'm prepared to do that too.

Basically I want something that's reasonably easy to use that has plenty of historical data.

none, suggest forward testing.
 
none, suggest forward testing.

Can someone explain this line of thought?

I've always been under the impression that it stemmed from the over optimised crap like fap turbo (as in rules like "buy on july 2007 at 3:13").

How does it relate to personal testing though? As long as you're not retarded I don't see the problem. If I forward test a system, and then backtest it, I'm going to get the exact same results.

Can't be this BS that the past doesn't repeat itself as dutch was preaching that on his gift thread.

What's the beef with backtesting?
 
There's nothing really wrong with the concept of backtesting, if used sensibly. Lets say you look at a chart, and you form the opinion that price bounces between the upper and lower bollinger bands. So you write a script, backtest and find its not profitable. The problems start when you modify the original idea, so maybe you change the period length, or the deviaton, or maybe you add a stop loss, or scale in, or scale out, or add an extra indicator etc until such point that you get a decent looking equity cureve. At that point, you have a serious data mining bias problem.

If you use backtesting to determine things like max drawdown, or to see how something performs in under particular market conditionss, then there's some mertit, but even thats a bit pointless as markets are non stationary.

To use it as a tool to find ideas that make money is the dumbest thing imaginable. The moment you add in any form of optimisation you are on seriously dodgy ground.

The other issue of course is that these tools are commercial software products, written to satisfy the demands of users (and the users by and large dont really know what they want), in the worst cases, they are tools provided by people who are taking the other sides of your trades !

Apart from that, there are issues with most of the commercial products, bad data, holes in data, indicators not calculating correctly, bizarre quirks in the way the backtester works etc. However, the main point I was making is that its extremely unlikely that a product thats extremely simple to use, and requiring no specialist knowledge is going to return anything meaningful.
 
Backtesting is just a starting point, you should forward test anyway.
Good and bad data will make all the difference between a backtest lining up with walk forward results.

Biggest pitfall is curve fitting, more than 4 parameters and you WILL curve fit.
I'd suggest Ninja trader for the following reasons:

1/ Strategy wizard - big help to get you started with no C# programming knowledge
2/ Walk forward optimiser - reduces chance of curve fit using mechanical optimisation.

Some links:
NinjaTrader stock, futures and forex charting software and online trading platform. Download registration.
Make sure your OS is fully updated.
You will also need dot net 3.5 (full version, in case of cache corruption):
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/e/20e90413-712f-438c-988e-fdaa79a8ac3d/dotnetfx35.exe

Tutorial links on Ninja operation:
NinjaTraderLLC's Channel - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Getting Started Backtesting - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Strategy Wizard - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Manipulating Strategy Parameters and Settings - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Getting Started With Optimization - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Walk Forward Optimization - YouTube

Data, no idea what you want, but a starting point would be:
Historical Intraday Tick by Tick Data | Stock Market Data | Historical Futures, Equities, Index and Options Data
Global Financial Data
OlsenData: Welcome

The above data sources are not cheap.
Best free intra day data is probably Dukascopy.
 
Last edited:
I am a big trader enthusiast - however I am yet to download any software for backtesting.

What software should i get?
Ideally it woiuld be free - but if I need to splash out a few quid for a siuperior product then i'm prepared to do that too.

Basically I want something that's reasonably easy to use that has plenty of historical data.

I wrote my own program using Visual Basic...but I'm almost a genius. Although technically it wasn't a backtesting program, instead, it was a program that allowed me to trade historical data as if it were live. The problem was, I included a 'pause' button so that I could take a break when I needed to without missing out on anything...it took me a while to get out of the habit of looking for the pause button when I was trading for real.
 
Can someone explain this line of thought?

I've always been under the impression that it stemmed from the over optimised crap like fap turbo (as in rules like "buy on july 2007 at 3:13").

How does it relate to personal testing though? As long as you're not retarded I don't see the problem. If I forward test a system, and then backtest it, I'm going to get the exact same results.

Can't be this BS that the past doesn't repeat itself as dutch was preaching that on his gift thread.

What's the beef with backtesting?

howz you gunna backtest if you are trading discretionary? I understand why you would want to do this if you were a mechanical trader but to date I have seen no evidence that mechanical trading works. Not saying it doesnt just havn't seen any evidence. eg. people making money week in week out with their little robot.
 
howz you gunna backtest if you are trading discretionary? I understand why you would want to do this if you were a mechanical trader but to date I have seen no evidence that mechanical trading works. Not saying it doesnt just havn't seen any evidence. eg. people making money week in week out with their little robot.

Oh, discretionary trading, no point backtesting that, but think the OP was reffering to a strategy.

As to no evidence of mechanical strategies. Heard of tradebot? The turtle traders?

Hell, go over to forex factory, download steve hopwoods boris schlossberg (or whoever) MA MACD strat, put it on an account for a year at reasonable, and then in a year you'll have evidence. :LOL:
 
just havn't seen any evidence. eg. people making money week in week out with their little robot.

making money week in week out.... from a robot... you have to be pulling my pisser

I make well over 100% returns year in year out, but its a rare occurrence to get consecutive runs of profitable weeks. Even when I do, its usually recovering from a previous drawdown.

This idea of making money week in week out from a robot is complete fantasy. Seriously, I'm probably only making new equity highs around 18% of the time, that means 82% of the time I AM LOSING MONEY !

you get me ?
 
Oh, discretionary trading, no point backtesting that, but think the OP was reffering to a strategy.

That isn't entirely correct. Even if someone is a discretionary trader they still follow a sound methodology. This must be tested, practised and refined and can be done with historical data under the condition that you trade it as if it were live. This gives you many more hours under 'live' market conditions than live or demo trading alone.
 
That isn't entirely correct. Even if someone is a discretionary trader they still follow a sound methodology. This must be tested, practised and refined and can be done with historical data under the condition that you trade it as if it were live. This gives you many more hours under 'live' market conditions than live or demo trading alone.

My apologies.

Relatively* pointless.

*Relative to backtesting a mechanical system.
 
You don't actually need software to backtest strategy unless of course you are soft in the head and have sh1t for brains.
 
Backtesting is just a starting point, you should forward test anyway.
Good and bad data will make all the difference between a backtest lining up with walk forward results.

Biggest pitfall is curve fitting, more than 4 parameters and you WILL curve fit.
I'd suggest Ninja trader for the following reasons:

1/ Strategy wizard - big help to get you started with no C# programming knowledge
2/ Walk forward optimiser - reduces chance of curve fit using mechanical optimisation.

Some links:
NinjaTrader stock, futures and forex charting software and online trading platform. Download registration.
Make sure your OS is fully updated.
You will also need dot net 3.5 (full version, in case of cache corruption):
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/e/20e90413-712f-438c-988e-fdaa79a8ac3d/dotnetfx35.exe

Tutorial links on Ninja operation:
NinjaTraderLLC's Channel - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Getting Started Backtesting - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Strategy Wizard - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Manipulating Strategy Parameters and Settings - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Getting Started With Optimization - YouTube
NinjaTrader 7 | Walk Forward Optimization - YouTube

Data, no idea what you want, but a starting point would be:
Historical Intraday Tick by Tick Data | Stock Market Data | Historical Futures, Equities, Index and Options Data
Global Financial Data
OlsenData: Welcome

The above data sources are not cheap.
Best free intra day data is probably Dukascopy.


Hi,

Regarding Historical Data, for NinjaTrader I've found this dudes:
Forex Historical Data for Free

They have tick data for NinjaTrader and also ASCII data that can be imported to any other tool.

Take a look to see if it suits your needs.

Cheers,
 
If you have an iPad, try Confidant. You can create custom instruments that you can then backtest against real historical data. It is easy to use, and doesn't require any programming.
 
back testing, isn't that for people who just want to put off forward trading!
 
You don't actually need software to backtest strategy unless of course you are soft in the head and have sh1t for brains.
Eloquently precise. For us common Joes, the old eyeball does a better job I think than any automated approach as you have more chance of keeping the brain engaged during the process. Moving away from the common Joe to the evil empire of institutional, commercial activities of course, the eyeball ain't much good to you and you just need to load up with more servers, bigger servers, faster servers and extremely expensive close proximity real estate. But then, that's a world away from what we do for our daily bread. I wouldn't mind some of their action though.
 
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