Updata TA - Metastock- Tradstation - Esignal

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ilia king

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This question has always puzzled me: I tried Updata TA for 1 month, and I really liked it (it was very user friendly and gave me a lot of TA for my charts) then I tried Metastock I also liked it but not as Updata, then I tried Tradestation, Esignal, and Sharescope.
:cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy:
Out of all these I liked Updata TA the best - but everywhere I look I find bad comments on Updata Ta (is it because it basic and doesn't let you write your own formuals or is it because it's expensive) hardly onyone uses Updata :?: .

Any help would be hugely appreciated :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy:

SOS
 
The question is, which of the programmes you tested meet your criteria for trading, and which do you think might meet your future needs. Being a Metastock devotee it has served me well for over 6 years from trading individual shares to the now popular spread betting. I has worked for me whether in Options, Stocks, Indices, Futures.

If you liked Updata best, you are obviously more comfortable with it then go for it. The more you piddle around trying this and that the more doubtful you will become. Trading is all about making decisions, and if you cant decide on a programme, you will have little success in your trades.

John
 
I use UD TA at present and have done for 3 yrs. I think that the reason that not many here use it is that it was very unstable in its first itereations but is now vastly improved. I have just been in touch with J du Plessis its main developer and have been told that Real Time scanning is in development and that more flexibilty such as say drawing MAs on OHLor C is very much in the pipeline although no timescale was mentioned.
The present version is very good but if you want to trade anything otherthan LSE Nasdaq or Liffe Instruments real time eg Eurex products it becomes rather expensive as you have the additional cost of an additional appropriate feed and exchange fees. UD standard package is for rt LSe and eod international. I think it has the potential to be market leading if it can shed its former bad press by continuing to provide reliable product and service
 
Well I'm not really sure know - I got Qcenter which gives you free streaming data from yahoo - anyway I got to try out Metastock I bit more - I do like it but not as much as Updata TA (by the way is there a difference between TA and trader - besides the cost), so I'm going to get Updata. But Metastock had an interesting functoin, Expert Advisor, it I think tells you when to buy and sell, how does do that? :cheesy: :cheesy:

Does anyone use it? :cheesy: :cheesy:
 

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Check out their signals in a flat market, bearing in mind you won't know it's a flat market at the time :cheesy:
 
I came to updata a few months back from metastock. before that was indexia. i have never regretted to move. updata ta does more than i really need but does it quicker and smarter than metastcok ever did. updata is not popular on this board. there is an anti-updata undercurrent but as uncle said, which meets your criteria. i always found getting support for metastock a pain. updata support is excellent.

As for signals on charts. updata does that too. it even works out which macd numbers to use and which buy and sell signals are best and then puts them on the charts.

Rog, how did you get in touch with Jeremy Duplessy? I would like to do that.
 
I've switched (in mid January) from Updata TA to Metastock, and am very pleased that I did so.
I still continue with Sharescope which is a valuable supplement to both. I'm an "end of day" user, so can't comment on the real time offerings.
Here's a summary of my experiences, and the pros and cons of both programs.
I started with Updata in Feb 2003 and attended the "Summer School" last year, and one of the day courses.

1) The user interface for Metastock is much slicker and more responsive. It's often quite tricky to use the stock screening function (the highlighter) to get the results you want.

2) Although you have an initial cost with Metastock, with Updata you're locked into an expensive (£31.73 per month) ongoing data supplier. As the Metastock feeds can be obtained from a number of suppliers, the ongoing cost is much more reasonable.

3) The bundled data feed was unreliable. This was one of the last straws that caused me to leave. e.g. the chart for Jarvis has obviously incorrect data. I reported this, the incorrect data was rectified, and the next day more incorrect data came through. It was reported by one member on the bulletin board (only visible to subscribers!) that over 40 FTSE 100 companies had wrong end of day data at that time.

4) Updata has more advanced "Point and Figure Charting" with counts worked out for you etc. - but Metastock is adequate here.

5) The "System Testing" facilities within Metastock are much more extensive and flexible than those in Updata.

6) Although the basic Metastock product has an extensive array of inbuilt indicators (over 120), explorations, system tests etc, if you want to take it further, you can write your own tailor made back tests, indicators etc. or you can download code from the internet (e.g. www.guppytraders.com or equis.com). And you purchase add-ons with trading systems from suppliers such as John Bollinger, or Steve Nison (candlestick techniques)

In short, although I'd like to support the UK product, I find that Metastock is a much more polished, reliable, trustworthy and powerful product than Updata TA.

John
 
This note is in response to Ilya's question about the Metastock "Expert Advisor".
Both Updata and Metastock can show buy and sell recommendations on a chart, like the example you posted.
It's very much your responibility to work out whether that's likely to make you a profit or a loss!
Updata has an "optimiser" to work out the best moving average parameters.
With Metastock you can use the System Tester to backtest the system.
For the example you showed, I think that would be the "Equis - MACD" advisor.
It has a formula which you can tailor if you want to:
the buy signal is:
MACD() > Mov(MACD(),9,E)
which means buy when the MACD crosses above a 9 day exponential moving average of the MACD.
You can replace the "9" by an optimisation variable if you want the program to work out the most profitable period for you.
If you want to find out more about the programming language, you can download a short manual from the equis site:
http://www.equis.com/Education/FormulaPrimer.pdf

I hope this helps,

John
 
Thanks John - A great help! :cheesy: :D - GruntnoWay, I'm going to use Updata just for the charts because I like them but Metastock for everything else.
Two more questions what is better Tradsation 2000i or Tradestation 7 or Metastock (the two expensive beasts!), is Tradestation more accurate also I think it can be programmed a bit more.
My second question is how can you program these two programs and install plugins (and is helpfull?) - I'm being vague but that is just because I would like a broad view.

P.S John the pdf guide was great - still reading it
 
Also is there a way to get free Data for Tradstation or Metastock - I tried qCenter but didn't like it. Well - instead off free very cheap.

Thanks
 
John. good information. its funny we went in opposite directions. that is why it is good that we have a range of programmes to choose from. i would not go back to metastock now. it takes too long to do anything. i like p n f charts. metastocks are not good.

Ilia try the optimiser in updata. it does back testing on all indicators including point n figure if you are interested.

tradestation is better than metastock for testing. the latest versions of tradestation are not as good as the early ones.
 
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Yes, it is funny how we've both gone different ways - each of us has different preferences.

Ilia - as to your 2nd question about how you program them and install plugins etc. - for metastock you just enter a formula into a dialogue box if you want to do your own programming.
Updata isn't quite so flexible - you have to choose between preset options, so you can choose to optimise various indicators, and see how they would have performed, but can't get so complex with trading rules e.g. you could have a buy rule something like there must have been a moving average crossover, and the close price must have stayed above the moving average for 4 days, and prior to the 4 days a certain candlestick pattern must have occurred.
Plugins are easy to install - you just run the installer program. The painful thing is that they tend to be expensive. After installation you have various extra proprietary explorations, trading systems, advisors etc. available to you. You can see some of the available plugins on the equis site.
One other feature in Metastock that I really like is that you can display data from an Excel spreadsheet that you entered, just as if it came from your data provider via "Window OLE". This is really useful to be as I have a 50k pension fund, for which I can swap funds online without penalty, and I just have price data, no volume. This enables me to put the daily data into a spreadsheet, and plot a point & figure chart .

Regards,

John
 
Has anyone heard of AmiBroker, I think it can be linked to TradeStation, It's got a lot of good comments
 
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