Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Stator Portfolio Management Software - any good?

Today is Sun, 11Apr21. Here is BHP to the latest date in Amibroker, using Norgate Data.

1618134968010.png

In your chart, why do you think 26Feb21 is the latest data for BHP?

In any case, my chart in Stator remains as my previous post, so clearly I haven't configured Norgate properly.

Configuring the Norgate plugin is not documented in your latest PDF doc. If you have additional instructions, please post them here or email them (you have my email address).
 
Ok, looking more closely, it looks like Stator only labels every other month in the X Axis, unlike Amibroker (or at least AB as this zoom level).

Below is a weekly chart to match Anthony's post. The two don't look quite in sync to me - my last three bars are green, red, green, different than Stator's.

I'm not going to use Stator as my charting package, for now I'm just using the chart to see that the data has been imported, before I go to the effort of importing my historic trades.

Regardless, I still only get limited data in Stator per my previous post. I'll try deleting and re-creating the Norgate template, otherwise I'm stuck.

1618136248073.png
 
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In any case, my chart in Stator remains as my previous post, so clearly I haven't configured Norgate properly.
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The last label shown does not always correlate to the last date shown.
Especially if using weekly or monthly bars. For the record, the last bar shown is for a date in April 2021.

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Configuring the Norgate plugin is not documented in your latest PDF doc. If you have additional instructions, please post them here or email them (you have my email address).
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Documentation has been added to the PDF help file and will be included in the next release.

We have also added additional template settings for the Norgate Plugin to manage ticker suffix and prefix. This is useful for those with subscriptions to more than one market, i.e. US & ASX whereby ASX tickers have the suffix ".au".

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Regardless, I still only get limited data in Stator per my previous post. I'll try deleting and re-creating the Norgate template, otherwise I'm stuck.
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The issue you have is related to the Norgate Plugin and the charting data setting "Use Last X Bars". It's a data ordering issue which has now been resolved and will be included in the next release. All other charting data retrieval methods work as intended. This was the only one with an issue.
 
I've had a few email exchanges with Anthony the developer of Stator. Great guy, excellent customer service (sent several long emails over a weekend, patient with my noob questions), and a very experienced trader himself.

I think I've taken those emails as far as they can go - Anthony is a pretty busy guy. So, I have some questions and/or comments for you experienced Stator users. I have read the Stator doc cover-to-cover. My version is Stator Pro 4.0.21110.

My main issue is in importing my historic trade data from the last FY. I've only been trading for 12 months, so not *that* much data. I've used three brokers: Macquarie Online, FPMarkets, and have settled on Interactive Brokers for the long term. Each broker has a different format for their data extracts, yet all are somewhat similar.

From my emails with Anthony, from reading the doc, and from the user interface, it appears there are three ways to import historic trade data via CSV:

  1. Import open positions
  2. Close an open position
  3. Import closed positions

#1 is easy - just filter the CSV on the buys, save to a new CSV, and import into Stator.

#2 is problematic - I need to have a unique identifier of the open position, which is either in the broker export, or I could create it myself, say a concatenation of the ticker + date. But linking this unique identifier of the open to the close is a lot of work, and no broker (at least those I've used) match sells to buys via some linking identifier.

#3 is also problematic - I would need to collapse the buys and sells onto one row. I conclude this based on the required columns for this import. Again, a lot of work.

#2 and #3 are further complicated if the transaction was "complex" - multiple buys and sells for the one trade.

As an example, how could I import something like this:

IDOriginal DateDateTimeAccount CodeBuy or SellCurrencyExchangeStockVolumeOriginal PricePrice
BBF0FFA208/02/20212021-02-08
10:06:44 AM​
123456BuyAUDASXNVX5111111
C3F0FFA208/02/20212021-02-08
10:06:44 AM​
123456BuyAUDASXNVX378112112
C5F0FFA208/02/20212021-02-08
10:06:44 AM​
123456BuyAUDASXNVX1,800113113
C6F0FFA208/02/20212021-02-08
10:06:44 AM​
123456BuyAUDASXNVX500114114
C7F0FFA208/02/20212021-02-08
10:06:44 AM​
123456BuyAUDASXNVX888115115
FA44C51E01/03/20212021-03-01
10:07:01 AM​
123456SellAUDASXNVX3,571456456

In this case, I had 5 buys, then closed out the position with a single sell. And I need to import the 5 buys separately so that Stator will calculate the average price.

Or, how could I import this if I scaled out, closing the position with 2 sells instead of one?

Finally, Anthony led me to believe that in this situation, I would have to split the sell into 5 separate transactions, closing each open position individually. Is this correct? If so, then this would not reconcile to my broker exports.

Here's another example:

  • ABC.au: Buy 2020-01-01 100 shares
  • ABC.au: Buy 2020-02-01 100 shares
  • ABC.au: Buy 2020-03-01 100 shares
  • ABC.au: Sell 2020-04-01 150 shares
  • ABC.au: Sell 2020-05-01 50 shares
How could I import that?

From my brief use of Stator, plus the documentation as well as previous comments in this thread, I think it's a good product, and I look forward to using it more. It may be particularly useful in completing my upcoming taxes.

So the following comment isn't a dig on Stator, merely my thoughts based on my current understanding.

I think the "problem" is Stator's concept of "closing" an open position. As far as I know, this concept doesn't exist with brokers.

My simplistic/brief explanation:

Long positions:
Buy: If you have the funds, you buy the instrument
Sell: If you aren't authorised for shorting, then if the # of shares sold <= # of shares owned, you sell. The remaining quantity is >= 0. But I don't think the broker considers the trade "closed", merely that your current holding of that instrument is 0. If you are authorised for shorting then I assume you transition from a long position on ABC.au to a short position.

Short positions:
Sell (Short): If you are authorised for shorting, short the instrument
Buy (Cover): Cover the position. TBH I don't know what happens if the # of shares bought is > # of shares shorted - are you then in a long position?

Bottom line: I wish I could just point Stator at a list of Buys/Sells export that most brokers create, and it just sucks in the data. I would even be happy to manually fix the positions via the user interface on those rare occasions where the transaction was "complex" as described above.

In this respect, Share Trade Tracker was much easier to bulk import trades, although Stator has much richer functionality - once you can import your trades.

If you have any guidance on the process of importing historic trades via CSV exports that brokers provide I would be most grateful. If any of the above is incorrect please let me know that as well.

Kind Regards...
 
Stator like most/all software needs things to be inputted in strict format, and thats just to hard to do so i gave up years ago.

I enter trades and exits and div reinvestments, run a tax report and thats it. Everything else is just to difficult.
 
Just a quick shout out to Anthony and his team at Anfield Cap for their quick support on Stator.

Had a significant problem with Stator this morning and Anthony was super quick and diligent about getting the issue resolved and helping me get back "online".

Their software and support is great.
 
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