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A belated response to this posting. I got backed up responding to reactions
to the PowerST product announcement, as well as private emails from
interested individuals requesting PowerST demos.
Although this posting I am responding to has a negative tone, the
misunderstanding it reflects is valuable feedback showing what aspects of the
PowerST product needed to be explained in more detail. In response, I
enhanced the FAQ page on the PowerST web site to hopefully help prevent this
level of misunderstanding in the future.
See: www.powertesting.com/faq.html
> Comments Inline correcting oversights in PowerST product claims:
>
> <<In fact, I believe that PowerST is the **ONLY** product on the market
> which
> has the ability to program money management rules. >>
>
> OOPS! forgot one! TraderWare allows you to custom program any combination
of
> entries and exits and any type of money management rules in a programming
> language called VB, instead of C++.
PowerST does all of this also (although, of course, in C++ rather than VB).
PowerST also supports portfolio level money management. When I typed the
statement quoted above I excluded the word "portfolio". The correct statement
is, "I believe that PowerST is the **ONLY** product on the market which has
the ability to program **portfolio** money management rules". Sorry about the
confusion this caused. In case this paragraph sounds familiar, it is because
this is the second time I pointed out my mistake in this quote (to be clear,
I am not saying the author of the post I am responding to missed the first
time I pointed this out.. rather, this was jumped on multiple times -
including the above quote - before I was able to respond and correct).
I haven't downloaded and installed the TraderWare demo, but I have been
reading the various postings on the subject with great interest. I have not
seen any mention of portfolio money management capability in TraderWare. My
assumption is that the TraderWare product does not support portfolio money
management. Please correct me if I am wrong.
This is a misunderstanding affecting much of the rest of this posting. The
posting is written from the perspective that TraderWare contains the same
money management capabilities as PowerST, which I believe is incorrect.
Besides, most of the posting is directly comparing PowerST versus TraderWare
as if to make a decision to go toward one or the other. This is not
necessarily the case. This is my summary:
If you are an end of day trader, interested in TraderWare or TradeLab for
system testing capabilities and the Visual Basic programming environment, you
should take a look at PowerST. It is a product dedicated specifically to
trading system and money management research and therefore has many features
in the area of it's specialty. And it is a complete standalone package,
including testing capability and daily trade signals.
If you are an intraday trader who requires intraday data to test your systems
and trade your systems on a day to day basis, then PowerST is not a
standalone solution. It is something to be used in conjunction with an
intraday program such as TradeStation or TraderWare or TradeLab. Specifically
it is an add-on for the specific feature of portfolio money management.
Someday PowerST will also support testing against intraday data, at which
time this separation between end of day use and intra day use will blend
quite a bit more. But this will not be part of the initial release of the
product, so it is premature to discuss this in detail at this time.
> <<+) Since PowerST also contains a full trading rules programming
> environment,
> it can work standalone (although, yes, this is currently limited to end of
> day data).>>
>
> TraderWare contains a full trading rules programming environment that works
> standalone, and can do tests on virtually any type of data you choose,
> including daily, hourly, intraday X minute, intraday X tick, X Second. In
> addition you can test your systems by themselves, or you can display them
on
> charts, program them to trigger alerts in the alert window, etc.
Yes, this is an impressive set of features. But this list is not a super-set
of PowerST features. PowerST has features TraderWare lacks, TraderWare
contains features PowerST lacks, and more than anything both share a lot of
features in common features. I think each potential customer needs to do
their own evaluation.
> <<Especially when getting into actual trading, traders seem to want as much
> automation as possible, which PowerST is very good at with the ability to
> define portfolios of markets and generate trade signals for portfolios of
> markets. >>
>
> Indeed traders want automation, which is why TraderWare allows you to test
> baskets of securities and baskets of symbols just by making a couple of
> clicks. TW also comes with a built-in portfolio tool which can be set to
> automatically create a single portfolio equity curve from the combined
> entries and exits of the individual systems, or to create individual equity
> curves from the system results of each system on each symbol! In other
words
> you could test Dell, IBM and INTC on 5 separate systems and create a
> combined equity curve, or create individual equity curves.
PowerST can do these things also.
> <<The thing I can say as a fact is that some current PowerST users did
> extensive marketplace searches of other products, and ended up choosing
> PowerST for it's money management capabilities.>>
>
> This may be true, but it is also true that at the time they did their
> searches, TW was not publicly available.
I am absolutely and 100% convinced that these current PowerST users would NOT
have chosen TraderWare if it was publicly available. They chose PowerST for
portfolio money management capabilities which TraderWare doesn't support. In
fact, I have spoken to some current customers about TraderWare who have said
they have no interest in TraderWare.
> <<PowerST is only a replacement for the **system testing** features of
> TradeStation. And at this time it is only a replacement for the system
> testing features of TradeStation for EOD data.>>
>
> TW is currently a replacement for the entire TS platform, including system
> testing on EOD and intraday data.
Yes, this is also my impression about the goals of TW from reading the
various discussions. However, TradeStation doesn't support rollovers or
portfolio level money management either.
> <<Let me also note that PowerST is not simply a **replacement** for the
> system
> testing features of TradeStation. It has some important system testing
> features beyond what the TradeStation offers. For example, the ability to
> test against actual commodity contracts processing rollovers as would be
> done in actual trading.>>
>
> This is a nice feature. It is not built into the current TW, but could be
> programmed in since TW contains an industry standard programming language,
> VB.
You could also just go out and get a copy of Visual Basic or a C++ compiler
and start from scratch on your own. Why be dependent on all of this complex
software when you can just write your own? Well, the answer is obviously that
writing your own is a tremendous amount of work, even for an accomplished
programmer. For a trader without previous programming experience, lets just
say they would have to learn a lot of programming to do this.
You can trivialize the programming of the rollovers features because you have
never attempted it. On the other hand, I have programmed the rollovers
feature into PowerST and therefore know the complexity of the undertaking
from personal experience. Certainly, part of the complexity of the rollovers
feature within PowerST is the need to support it as a product, which means a
user interface. Also, flexibility and programmability in ways rollover can be
accomplished to support the rollover styles of various traders. A hard coded
implementation for your own use only would be less work, but it is still a
significant project. I am convinced that nobody would want to undertake this
if there is a commercial product on the market which already supports it.
> <<Also, control over the accuracy of trade execution in
> PowerST is more advanced than TradeStation.>>
>
> Likewise for TW.
I don't doubt that TW has more control over accuracy of trade execution than
TradeStation. I haven't explored TW in that much detail.
But, certainly I don't think you are saying that trade execution enhancements
in TW are the same as in PowerST. The full scope of trade execution
enhancements in PowerST has never been detailed in a public forum, so you
could not be aware of the details unless you have discussed this directly
with a current PowerST user, which I doubt.
> <<No other software offers the portfolio money management testing
> capabilities
> of PowerST.>>
>
> There are some nice built in features in PowerST that aren't found in other
> programs, including TW. TraderWare does allow you to custom program them in
> so if you really want or need these custom money management capabilities
you
> can be a do it yourself-er and include it in with your systems. I have no
> doubts that some 3rd party application will come along to fill this need
(if
> it really is demanded) in the future with TW.
Actually, there already is a 3rd party application which can fill the need
for portfolio money management within TW. It is called PowerST! You can
export the necessary data from VB code (I assume this.. I should be careful
and say that I have not talked to anyone familiar with TW about the details
of this to confirm it is possible, but since it can be done from TradeStation
I highly suspect TraderWare can do this also). It would be great if someday
TW also provided a more automated export/import facility. I would like every
charting program to support PowerST as a money management add-on.
> What cannot be done in TW
> currently can be programmed in VB and integrated into TW - I don't know how
> it works with PowerST - if it allows for add on modules or to what extent
> the custom programming capability can extend the current product by
creating
> custom features not found in the shipping product. TW allows custom VB
> programming while PowerST allows custom C++ programming.
I don't know about TW in enough detail to make absolute statements, but I
highly suspect TW and PowerST are very similar in this regard.
> The bottom line difference is that TW is a complete trading platform, while
> PowerST is a complete EOD system testing platform. IOU, TraderWare is the
> whole enchilada.
My summary would be that PowerST is the whole enchilada for end of day
traders. TraderWare is not the whole enchilada for end of day traders because
it doesn't support testing against actual contracts with rollovers or
portfolio money management. For intraday, neither PowerST or TraderWare is
the whole enchilada as discussed above.
> Which would you rather learn, Visual Basic, or the more arcane C++?
> (assuming you don't already know either of these programming languages)
My view of the Visual Basic versus C++ issue is discussed at length in the
Features page of the PowerST web site. It isn't as simple as VB good, C++ bad
and arcane. In fact, the web site discusses some distinct advantages to C++.
It is important to realize that it isn't necessary to be proficient in the
entire C++ language to program trading rules into PowerST. Rather, the goal
of the PowerST programming environment is to intentionally restrict use of
the C++ language to a simple subset of the language (dubbed "Simple C++"). I
think that part of the reason why VB is sometimes viewed as being easier than
C++ is because it doesn't contain as many language features as C++. To learn
the entire C++ language is a much larger task than learning the entire Visual
Basic language. But for programming trading rules into PowerST, it is not
necessary to learn the entire C++ language. Rather, only a subset more like
the core features of VB is required. On the web page, I contend that for the
application of programming trading rules into a trading system testing
software environment, one language versus another is a minor issue.
The real issue is the capabilities of the testing environment, not the
language used to specify trading rules. For example, PowerST has the ability
to test against actual contract data simulating the way rollovers would be
done in actual trading. This can be a more accurate simulation of what the
results of actual trading of a system would be. I would think traders
evaluating testing software would be more interested in these types of
capabilities issues than the particular syntax of the language used to
express trading rules.
> Patrick White
Bob Bolotin
www.powertesting.com
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
847-982-1910
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