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Kevin:
Thanks for the detailed feedback re: Amibroker. I'll reload the program in some of my spare (?) time. And sorry I called you Tom.
Harry
--- In equismetastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kevin243@xxxx wrote:
> 1 - Amibroker has its own language, AFL. But there are many similarities.
> I'm not saying this is effortless at all, ie. change to Amibroker. I keep a
> copy of HELP up and running whenever I'm writing code. For functions not
> available in Metastock, obviously this is all new code/syntax. I've wasted a
> lot more time trying to understand 8.0/8.01 than converting my current T/S to
> AFL (about 4 systems). I wasted a lot of time finding out about the 20,000
> report limit which wasn't documented anywhere in 8.0. That really made me
> mad. As to the current quirks of the System Tester, I find Equis response
> totally unacceptable.
>
> With Amibroker, you can easily contact the owner, chief programmer, and
> discuss. Equis, obviously insulates their top bosses from the people that
> use their software, otherwise they would publish their email addresses. It
> didn't use to be that way at Equis. The bosses at Equis have lost touch with
> their customer base. I'm sure they just look at market share, customer
> profiles, competition, etc. Obviously selling Reuters data is as important
> or more important than selling software.
>
> 30 days to evaluate their software, it took Equis more than 30 days just to
> get 8.0 and 8.01 shipped to me. They screwed up the shipping both times.
>
>
> 2 - I've asked for trade statistics to be reported in Percentage form or
> "Normalized" results. They continue to report statistics in dollars which is
> worthless for comparing one stock to another or for consideration of future
> results. Tell me this, if a system test reports the worst loss as $25,381,
> what does that tell you? Nothing, because until you know what was invested
> at the time, it tells you nothing. If I had $40,000 invested at the time,
> this is a disaster. If I had 2.5 million invested at the time, this is
> terrific results. Do you realize that a stock split affects the dollar loss
> calculations and test statistics, where a stock split would have no effect on
> percentage (normalized) calculations? Do you realize that the more
> successful your trading system is, the less useful the trading statistics are
> from Metastock? I refer you to "Trading Systems that Work", by Thomas
> Stridsman, or if you are more math oriented, Ralph Vinces works. Stridsman
> is quit critical of the software writers and their misleading backtest
> reports. The back tester in Amibroker does report several of the statistics
> in % or normalized. Further, you can adapt various trading templates that
> people have written to your database and trading system. The issue of
> backtesting goes away completely. Just click on a template, and you have
> alot of trading statistics, and that fast. Want different trade statistics,
> - just reprogram the template.
>
> Various references in Equis documentation point out that it is important to
> have a smooth equity curve. I agree entirely. This is Risk and Reward, not
> just Reward. So "what" in the System backtester allows you to optimize a
> smooth equity curve? A smooth equity curve can be defined or measured
> several different ways. One way would be a regression slope of the equity
> curve along with a standard error, -all done in percentages. Another way
> would be the total % gain over that max equity drawdown in % over the same
> period. So Equis says a smooth equity curve is important, but doesn't give
> you the tools to optimize on such a variable or find an gem in a stack of
> 8000 stocks or 15000 mutual funds.
>
> This isn't the standard report in amibroker, but you can get there very
> easily by exporting the amibroker test results over to Excel and dividing the
> total % return by the Max % System Drawdown. Now all stocks are very
> comparable. You will learn alot about your trading system, especially in
> terms of what kind of drawdowns you should be expecting in the future.
>
>
>
> 3 - Equis should be proud of their user interface. The smart chart display,
> click and pick, even a simple bar chart has to be programmed in Amibroker.
> Metastock is head and shoulders above Amibroker in terms of ease of use,
> graphics etc. Almost everything you see and take for granted in Metastock,
> will probably have to be programmed by you in Amibroker. However, once
> programmed, you don't have to do that again. Remember that programming is
> power, control and understanding of the output you get.
>
> Here is the warning though. That masterful user interface with Metastock has
> nothing to do with making money with the software. Finding a trading system
> that you can trade, some stocks or markets that the system will generate a
> positive profit with reasonable risk expectation, and along with careful
> money management is what is needed to make money. Equis only addresses
> profits and nothing else (except the equity curve).
>
> After a few years of trading in wild and crazy markets, software interface
> doesn't mean much to me. Managing profits and risk is everything to making
> money, which is why I'm trading in the first place. I think some people
> rather program and make cool graphs and charts, than make money. Maybe they
> think that the two are related, ... well they aren't.
>
> Kevin Campbell
>
>
>
>
> In a message dated 5/13/03 12:31:09 AM Central Daylight Time,
> hmw3@xxxx writes:
>
> >
> > Tom:
> >
> > You said:
> > >>In the mean time, I have converted all my trading systems and
> > explorations to Amibroker for $200 - real time analysis and a few hours
> > effort. Hardly the cost of a "bad fill".
> >
> > So I now have an alternative to Metastock.
> >
> > Like I said, I used Metastock to make a lot of money in the past, but 8.0
> > and 8.01 don't cut it. Several of my unanswered complaints to Equis are
> > readily available in Amibroker.<<
> >
> > I looked at Amibroker 4.2 briefly while I was evaluating Metastock 8 (EOD
> > version). I'll admit I was turned off because, until you paid for the
> > program, you had to create your database each time you opened the program,
> > couldn't save any formulas, etc: in short, you had to essentially start
> > over ever time you opened the program. It takes me a while to understand a
> > program, and I wasn't able to do it effectively with the Amibroker sample.
> > Metastock gave me 30 days and a fully functional program to evaluate.
> >
> > Having said that, a few questions now that you have switched:
> > 1. Will Amibroker accept your Metastock formulas for system testing and
> > indicators, or do you have to learn a new language?
> > 2. You said it overcomes some of the Metastock 8 shortcomings. What are
> > these?
> > 3. And since no program is perfect, what shortcomings does Amibroker have
> > that Metastock did NOT have?
> >
> > Harry
> >
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