|
PureBytes Links
Trading Reference Links
|
At 06:48 PM 1/17/2005, Sethw2@xxxxxxx wrote:
>Why is it that most large traders (according to Alex) do not use the latest TS version? Either Bob or Alex is incorrect--and they are both freakin' geniuses... I am still using 4.0 because I don't know what version to trust after that and don't want to gamble my business on an upgrade that is bug-ridden. (Those who have continuously been trading through the TS upgrade cycle only had 1 choice for a continuously robust platform, and that was 4.0) If I wanted to upgrade, what is the version that would allow me to use my tick database and eSignal, and is there any point to upgrading?
>
>Not trying to be a smart-ass--I just really want to know if there is any upside to migrating from the 4.0 platform...
Good questions. I remember TS4 as a very fast and solid product that always
worked reliably. It was "lean & mean" software. The person who designed it
was clearly a very good software architect and programmer. It had the feel
of something done by a single person, not a committee. I call that
"conceptual integrity". It did take 16 builds to get to a usable version so
their internal processes left a lot to be desired even then.
But it was also a 16 bit application with lots of 64K limits, lots of
numerical accuracy problems, lots of "data base out of space issues", etc.
TS2000i was their first attempt to upgrade it and it was miserably slow and
full of bugs, probably since they used a lot of the Microsoft programming
infrastructure instead of the lean & mean code of TS4. It had all the latest
Windows gizmos and the ridiculous overhead that went with them.
I suspect that the really good programmer that built TS4 had left and that
they had to start over with very inexperienced programmers. They obviously
had no concept of modern software development at that stage and were
releasing mostly untested code with obvious architectural flaws. It was a mess.
TS2000i SP5 was finally stable enough to be usable but is still a lot slower
than TS4. Fortunately, computers got a lot faster so the speed was not a big
issue. You learned to not do the things that would cause it to crash, etc.
The internal development processes have now improved greatly. I met the
engineering VP at TradeStation World conference last October and she seemed
to know what she was doing in terms of development processes.
Recent upgrades are rolled out slowly over time to the installed base so
that they can avoid major crises. They have all worked well for me.
The upcoming release (then called 8.1) was working on dozens of machines at
the show in October but is still in beta test. I know a beta tester and he
said they are still fixing the bugs. I know from my personal experience that
a good beta test on a major release can take six months so this is good news
for the quality. It has lots of major new features.
But if you must use your existing tick files, you cannot do so with TS8
directly. Perhaps the add-ons mentioned earlier will allow it. I forget
whether or not the ability to use ASCII data is in the new version but it is
supposedly coming sometime.
But the feature list over TS4 is enormous. It is now a 32 bit application so
no more limits on anything I have found. Arithmetic is very accurate, there
is no limit on the number of indicators. Symbols can have long names, etc.
Indicators can be stored in separate directories. The EasyLanguage editor is
now just another window in TradeStation so when you open a workspace, all
the EasyLanguage windows associated with that workspace open with it.
You can store and send to someone else your workspace or even your desktops
(collection of workspaces) and when they open them, they match what was on
your machine.
You can simply add signals to a trading system by inserting them - no more
"Include System" or separate strategy builder to combine signals. You can
selectively turn on or off all the different entries so you might first test
long entries, then short entries, then both together, all without changing
the code.
If you add or subtract an input to an indicator or change the name of a
plot, you just have to verify it and the new version is instantly on the
chart. You do not have to delete/reload it as you did with TS4.
There are lots of new language constructs such as call-by-reference so you
can effectively return lots of values and arrays from a function.
And now I spend almost zero time managing data. When I think of all the time
I spent trying to get good data, with backup machines collecting data from
different feeds, buying historical data in ASCII, buying conversion software
to convert to OMZ. Patching holes in the server. Sharing patches with others
who had the same problem, etc., I wonder how I ever got anything else done.
Now if you want to test some new symbol, you simply type it in and the chart
appears. If you are gone for a day, when you turn on your machine, it
reloads all the missing data in seconds. And I am spending much less for TS8
with real-time data than I did before when I was buying real-time data
separately.
The list seems endless. I haven't mentioned the other applications such as
RadarScreen, which is basically like having the most recent value of
indicators on hundreds of charts. You can sort the rows by simply clicking
on any column so you can screen a list of stocks in seconds.
Today when I made the chart I posted, I simply inserted into RadarScreen all
the symbols from the S&P 500 Index in a single step from the Symbol list. I
wrote and added the 3-line indicator that required the 200-day moving
average of each symbol. It automatically loaded 200 days of data for the 500
symbols (in about a minute) and displayed the value of the indicator for
each symbol in the new column. I then sorted the rows by simply clicking on
the header of that column. The whole operating took probably five minutes.
It would have taken days in TS4 to add the 500 symbols to the DownLoader
database, worrying if the symbol attributes were correct, downloading the
data from Dial Data of the HistoryBank, adding the symbols to a symbol list
in TS4, and setting up a chart and running through all 500 symbols and
sorting the results in Excel.
As most of you know, I was very critical of Omega during the TS2000i period
and was very skeptical of their business model change to becoming a
brokerage business. But it has made them a much better company. Now that
they are collecting their revenue monthly rather than all at the time of the
sale, they understand that to keep the customers paying, the stuff has to
work and customers have to be able to get their questions answered by the
support staff.
And if the software has bugs and their customers lose money in their
brokerage because of the bugs, they can be liable for the damages.
As a result it is now a much better product. There is simply no reason I
would ever go back to an older version at this point.
Hope this explanation helps...
Bob Fulks
|