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Volker:
>I am sure you have seen my occasional postings here :). I could not care
>less what people have to say but it still hurts if there is a lack of
>acknowledgement that Wealth-Lab actually is a software that offers 90% of
>what TS has and many features that TS does not have; features that I find
>most important like portfolio backtesting.
I would be the first to agree that WL has most of the functionality
of TS as well as additional features lacking in TS. So, why haven't
I migrated all my work to WL? Much as I am impressed by WL, I can
think of a few reasons why I don't use it:
1. Some key features are still lacking, such as the ability to
update on every tick. TS doesn't do this for strategies either, but
will at least do it for indicators. This is mandatory. Lack of
this feature makes WL of limited usefulness for real-time trading.
2. As a programmer, I find TS's language primitive but simple to
express ideas quickly. I find WL's language more robust but also
more clunky and harder to express ideas clearly in it (just look at
any WL code compared to equivalent TS code).
3. Lack (at least that's my perception) of support for the wide
universe of data feeds that TS2000i has.
4. Lack of adoption by successful, wealthy traders and system
developers, who sometimes approach me to write code for them. They
all use TradeStation, so developing stuff in WL wouldn't be useful.
They pretty much use TS2000i, not the latest one.
5. For someone who does most of their work on TS only when I have
spare time, WL's trial offer would permit me only one or two uses
before the trial period expires. That's not enough time to give
it a fair evaluation to determine if I'll adopt it for my trading
and system development. Instead of expiring in 30 calendar days
(or whatever the period is now), it should expire within 30 *usage*
days; that is, once the program has been run over 30 different
days, it expires. Running continually past midnight can increment
the count. The point is, this would allow prospective customers
sufficient time to become addicted to the software, at their own
pace, whether 30 usage days takes up 30 calendar days or eight
months.
>You say:
>" The idea of products like TradeStation was to allow you to create and
>backtest your trading ideas before trying them with real money. If you think
>you can do this without learning some programming you are fooling yourself."
>
>I agree you need programming skill to accomplish complex systems but for
>beginners the drag and drop system creation should be appealing (WL has it).
That may be true for beginners, but I have doubts that a drag&drop
method of "programming" will result in anything that can compete
with something written by a good programmer. Also, a language
designed for drag&drop functionality won't be optimal for direct
programming by hand; and I think this is true for WL's language.
-Alex
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