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With the arrival of the new millennium, it seems readers of this Omega
mailing list are finally getting some alternatives. Exactly what has been
sought year after year. Some competition in trading system software.
In the spirit of letting the readership of this mailing list know about all
alternatives which are emerging, let me point you to the web site:
www.powertesting.com
"PowerST: The Power System Tester" is a trading system software program which
has been (quietly) developed over the past 11+ years. The latest version of
the package is currently in controlled introduction, being used by a limited
number of word of mouth users.
To quote from the introduction on the web site:
>>>>>>
What is PowerST?
PowerST is a powerful collection of software features for trading system
research and actual trading. Real trading features requested by real traders.
PowerST is trading system software designed with an emphasis on accuracy of
testing, the ability to test trading systems and portfolio level money
management strategies of unlimited complexity, and the raw horsepower
features requested by serious traders.
PowerST is unmatched by any other software package on the market (not even
close!).
THE ABOVE ARE BOLD STATEMENTS!
Spend a few minutes browsing this Web site and you will see that these bold
statements are very much justified.
<<<<<<
To summarize the web site a little, here are some PowerST features:
=========
Fast and powerful trading system testing environment based upon an industry
standard programming language.
=========
Integrated portfolio level testing.
=========
Portfolio level money management testing. This is **THE** distinguishing
feature which is attracting early users to PowerST. Why? Because it simply
isn't available anyplace else in the scope of what PowerST has to offer.
The concept of testing mechanical trading system entry and exit rules against
historical market data is well established, with a wide variety of software
programs on the marketplace to assist this type of research. PowerST is one
of these software programs. Of course, the goal is to historically test how
trading strategies would have performed against the historical data. In other
words, to computer simulate the historical trading results of a trading
system.
Money management (also sometimes called asset allocation, position sizing, or
risk control) addresses the other trading decision, which is how much of a
commodity or stock to buy or sell. Many traders say that money management
will ultimately have more effect on long term trading performance than
entry/exit rules.
The PowerST portfolio level money management feature allows mechanical money
management strategies to be historically tested, similar the way entry/exit
rules are historically tested. Making money management decisions without
historical testing is analogous to trading a trading system without
computerized testing. For example, someone might theorize that if "Indicator
X" is above Y the market is going up, so buy. In this age of widespread
availability of computerized system testing software, few traders would
actually risk real money trading a system like this without first
historically testing the system with a computer. So, why would anyone make
their money management decisions without the same kind of computerized
historical testing? The answer in the past has been because there has not
been adequate commercial software available to do this type of money
management testing. This is changing with the commercial release of PowerST.
=========
Testing against actual individual commodity contracts with programmable
rollovers. No more need to maintain continuous contracts!
The debate about the validity of testing against continuous contracts has
raged since the beginning of computerized system testing. Think about this:
Why subject yourself to the vagaries of continuous contracts? While the
debate over the effects of testing against continuous contracts will rage on
forever, the fact is that there is no possible accuracy advantage to testing
against artificial continuous contracts rather than actual contract data.
PowerST has the ability to test against a series individual commodity
contracts, with rollovers being performed as contracts expire. Exactly as
would happen in actual trading.
How important is this rollovers feature? Some early users of the feature have
found it to be very important. For example, with one system RDB Computing,
Inc. worked on, testing against individual contracts with rollovers versus
testing against continuous contracts led to the difference between a
profitable historical equity curve and a flat historical equity curve. One
PowerST customer who extensively researched the difference in historical
testing results for continuous contracts versus actual individual contract
data characterized it as "scary" that traders will trade real money on
systems based upon historical testing against continuous contract data.
=========
And much more...
Take a look! www.powertesting.com
Bob Bolotin
President, RDB Computing, Inc.
Developer of "PowerST: The Power System Tester"
www.powertesting.com
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
847-982-1910
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