Software available for backtesting a system

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I would greatly appreciate any software that is reasonably priced (not sure if that means anything...maybe a few hundred dollars or less?) that has the ability to backtest a wide variety of criteria ( I own a mac if that makes a difference).

It seems the software Ive found is quite expensive and far and few in between...any suggestions or am I missing something?



Thanks
 
There are many.. start off with Ninjatrader... Although for Mac, I think the options are very limited.
 
I was looking at marketinout.com? Appears to be a paid subscription service of around 100-200 for the year.

Looks like it has a historical screen and backtesting capability.

Thoughts on marketinout?
 
I would greatly appreciate any software that is reasonably priced (not sure if that means anything...maybe a few hundred dollars or less?) that has the ability to backtest a wide variety of criteria ( I own a mac if that makes a difference).

It seems the software Ive found is quite expensive and far and few in between...any suggestions or am I missing something?

Thanks

google keyword
amibroker
 
Regardless of what platform you use; NinjaTrader, Meta Trader 4, MatLab... you will still need to pay for quality data (historical price data) to test your system on. That is a cost you need to keep in mind. MetaTrader does offer free data but they say it is unreliable junk data. Your system is only going to be as good as the data you can test it against. Of course, if you can't afford to purchase data you can start by using synthetic data. NinjaTrader offers this feature. Not sure about the other platforms.
 
Are the Ninja synthetic data based on some distribution? Do you know which or how they do it? I think it is good to test a trading system on synthetic data to see how it performs, if it generates many signals for example that is not a good sign.
 
Are the Ninja synthetic data based on some distribution? Do you know which or how they do it? I think it is good to test a trading system on synthetic data to see how it performs, if it generates many signals for example that is not a good sign.

NinjaTrader has a slider that allows you to adjust things like volatility on the synthetic data (to mimic different market conditions). They have videos on their YouTube channel explaining how to do it. Beyond that, I'm not sure what else you can tweak on the synthetic data settings. I haven't purchase NT yet, although I've read about 2/3 of the NT manual. I'm also looking into MatLab. It's twice as expensive but it does not require you to know C#. NT offers some point and click features, but I don't think those can create a fully automated trading system. For that, you will need to learn some C# to use NT. MatLab, on the other hand does not require you to learn programming. However, you are going to want to learn programming either way at some point if you are really serious. Lynda.com has great training videos to get you started if you are interested. I've watched a few of their programming courses and they helped me a lot. Even though they are 'just' video tutorials, it's not that easy. If you're new to programming you will have to take a lot of notes and watch many of the videos more than once. For example, to make it through a course with 8hrs of videos I think it took me something like 6 times that long - or 48 hours of note taking.

Here is an intro to MatLab video. Warning, it's over 1hr long.

http://www.mathworks.com/videos/alg...pplications-81775.html?s_iid=disc_rw_fis_cta1
 
Thinkorswim has an OnDemand feature that is free with a brokerage account.

TOS OnDemand will not work for someone who is seriously attempting to model a fully automated, professional trading system. For that you need to pay for high quality tick data (futures) or pip data (Forex), download the data and import it into your trading system software (NinjaTrader, MatLab, etc). Roughly speaking, 1-2 years worth of pip data might cost you $300 to $500 USD for one market but it could be more. Depends on where you buy it and it's been several months since I checked prices. Hard intra-second historical data is everything. But because of that, you'll pay for it.
 
TOS OnDemand will not work for someone who is seriously attempting to model a fully automated, professional trading system. For that you need to pay for high quality tick data (futures) or pip data (Forex), download the data and import it into your trading system software (NinjaTrader, MatLab, etc). Roughly speaking, 1-2 years worth of pip data might cost you $300 to $500 USD for one market but it could be more. Depends on where you buy it and it's been several months since I checked prices. Hard intra-second historical data is everything. But because of that, you'll pay for it.

Is Thinkorswim's OnDemand good for getting experience in analysis and day trading from your experience? I am asking as someone who is willing to manually place the trades and analyze the markets.
 
TOS OnDemand will not work for someone who is seriously attempting to model a fully automated, professional trading system. For that you need to pay for high quality tick data (futures) or pip data (Forex), download the data and import it into your trading system software (NinjaTrader, MatLab, etc). Roughly speaking, 1-2 years worth of pip data might cost you $300 to $500 USD for one market but it could be more. Depends on where you buy it and it's been several months since I checked prices. Hard intra-second historical data is everything. But because of that, you'll pay for it.

I trade a fully automated, professional trading system without tick data. For example I use 15-minutes.

You can get them free at http://www.iqfeed.net/ Just register and download all you need - it is free for first month. And they have a lot of intraday data.

About software - I use Amibroker, Also another good one is Wealth Lab. In any way you should be familiar with programming languages to test complex ideas in both.
 
How long have you been trading your system, what it your maximum draw down and what is the annual net return?
I trade from 2009 and feel very good. Average profit is 50% per year, drawdown is about 15% - 20% max.
It is not HFT with highrocketing procents, but it IS possible to trade without tick data.
 
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