TradeSim and Bullcharts

[dougy]

Hi all,

Have had TradeSim for a few months, finding it excellent for backtesting ideas within Bullcharts.

However one aspect has me flummoxed – it’s to do with the inclusion or exclusion of “open trades” in a simulation. I emailed TradeSim with the following question a few weeks ago but to date no response, so hoping someone on ASF may know the answer.

Under Tools – Preferences, there’s a flag to “Ignore Open Trades”. If this is selected, the reports include only trades which were exited by the end date. My query is – does selecting this flag mean that the available capital during a simulation remains intact even though a qualifying open trade may have occurred? If that is the case, then additional closed trades will be entered in the simulation, but they would not be valid, because they would have been made from capital already used by the open trades.

Any enlightenment greatly appreciated.

dougy

 

[tech/a]

If you tick "Ignore Open trades"
The report will as you say show only profit reports for those trades closed.
Open trades particularly in long term trading systems often amount to sizable sums.
If you leave it un ticked then every trade open at the time of the end of the simulation will be closed at that date and included regardless of status.

To answer your question if you ran the report a week earlier for example and another trade was triggered in the week between this and last simulation and the trade was still open then it would not be shown in the report if "Ignore Open Trades" is ticked.

That help.

 

[dougy]

If you tick "Ignore Open trades"
The report will as you say show only profit reports for those trades closed.
Open trades particularly in long term trading systems often amount to sizable sums.
If you leave it un ticked then every trade open at the time of the end of the simulation will be closed at that date and included regardless of status.

To answer your question if you ran the report a week earlier for example and another trade was triggered in the week between this and last simulation and the trade was still open then it would not be shown in the report if "Ignore Open Trades" is ticked.

That help.

Thank you tech/a, that gave me the clue to check the difference in the trade logs for the two scenarios - sure enough they reconcile - i.e. the capital utilised is the same in both cases, it's only the reporting which shows different outputs.
dougy

 

[wombat40]

dougy...do you have the standard or professional version of tradesim? is the standard version ok for bullcharts eod, or is the pro version desirable iyo

 

[Tanaka]

Does anyone know how/if you can do a Tradesim in Bullcharts with buy signal from weekly and sell signal from daily?

 

[rnr]

I think it would be possible on the proviso you created a weekly indicator to run on a daily chart.

Have a look at Roy Larsen's work on Multi Time Frame indicators and check to see whether they are easy to convert to BullScript. You may need to download and install the forum.dll from the Equis forum so that they will run but that will depend on the ability to code variable lookback periods in BullScript. There may also be other dll's to download if used in Roy's code.

MetaStock dll's are apparently compatible with BullCharts.

http://www.metastocktips.co.nz/

http://forum.equis.com/files/3018/programming_files/entry19695.aspx

Whilst it might sound a bit of a challenge I don't believe it will be that difficult.

 

[tech/a]

Does anyone know how/if you can do a Tradesim in Bullcharts with buy signal from weekly and sell signal from daily?

Its a good question and so is the reverse (daily buy Weekly sell)

Ill find out if someone doesnt get in before me.

 

[Tanaka]

I think it would be possible on the proviso you created a weekly indicator to run on a daily chart.

Have a look at Roy Larsen's work on Multi Time Frame indicators and check to see whether they are easy to convert to BullScript. You may need to download and install the forum.dll from the Equis forum so that they will run but that will depend on the ability to code variable lookback periods in BullScript. There may also be other dll's to download if used in Roy's code.

MetaStock dll's are apparently compatible with BullCharts.

http://www.metastocktips.co.nz/

http://forum.equis.com/files/3018/programming_files/entry19695.aspx

Whilst it might sound a bit of a challenge I don't believe it will be that difficult.

Cheers,

I had no trouble installing the forum.dll, having trouble with the the Multi-Frame formulas, it's wanting version Formula Organizer 7.0 to be installed (I believe verion 7.0 is a reference to metastock 7 therefore it won't extract into my Bullcharts).

I'm sending an email to Bullcharts now to see what they can do.

 

[rnr]

It sounds as though you have purchased the Roy's suite of Multi Time Frame formulas which he has sent you in an .exe file?

If this is the case then right click on the file and choose open with winzip and unzip the file.

Presumably you will then be able to copy & paste them into BullCharts so they can be converted to BullScript.

 

[Tanaka]

It sounds as though you have purchased the Roy's suite of Multi Time Frame formulas which he has sent you in an .exe file?

If this is the case then right click on the file and choose open with winzip and unzip the file.

Presumably you will then be able to copy & paste them into BullCharts so they can be converted to BullScript.

There is a sample formulas on the link you posted so i didn't have to pay, it's an .exe file that comes up with an error message telling me that I need version 7.0 of the FormOrg application, Bullcharts is version is 3 something, so they don't seem to be compatible. I am still waiting to hear back from Bullcharts.

 

[rnr]

I have checked out the sample you mention and noted that Roy has set up the exe file using the MetaStock auto extract (btw I have MetaStock, not BullCharts).

If you send Roy an email explaining that you have BC and what your trying to achieve then I'm sure he'll send you a copy of the sample formula in a format you can use.

I doubt whether BC support would want to get involved with this issue.

 

[Tanaka]

I have checked out the sample you mention and noted that Roy has set up the exe file using the MetaStock auto extract (btw I have MetaStock, not BullCharts).

If you send Roy an email explaining that you have BC and what your trying to achieve then I'm sure he'll send you a copy of the sample formula in a format you can use.

I doubt whether BC support would want to get involved with this issue.

Thanks for the advise.

BC support can't help, they suggested I run two different scans

I might approach Roy like you suggest. BC Support has been very good to me on other issues I have had with BC, but I'm starting to think I might have to invest in Metastock, there are so many useful forums for Metastock users.

Tradesim is very useful, I guess you use Metastock with Tradesim Rnr? Have you had any issues using them together?

 

[rnr]

TradeSim and MetaStock go well together and generally most problems are caused by the keyboard operator.

There are many traps that catch you out when coding a system for back-testing so it's imperative to randomly check trades taken by your system to ensure it is doing exactly as you expect with both entries and exits, that you are able to trade the system as it has been coded and also that your code does not look into the future.

BullCharts appears to be a good package and has some excellent features which are not present in MetaStock so it's probably worthwhile trying to resolve the coding challenges before looking at an alternative product. You can still use the MS forums for most code. Just my thoughts on the issue.

 

[dougy]

dougy...do you have the standard or professional version of tradesim? is the standard version ok for bullcharts eod, or is the pro version desirable iyo

Wombat, my apology - missed your post. I have the standard version of TradeSim which is adequate for my needs. I update data eod only, and trade using weekly timeframe.

Bullcharts is excellent. Their programming syntax is similar to Metastock, but all indicator scripts are revealed, and can be copied for experimenting, whereas Metastock indicator scripts are proprietory.

I have had a few hiccups since installing Bullcharts on a new PC with Windows7 - downloading data caused my PC to freeze. Eventually they supplied me with a standalone download program which works, but is a little more fiddly to use.
dougy

 

[wombat40]

no worries dougy....i ended up getting the professional version of tradesim and also bullcharts for a few months now...

still just a learner with them

puchased the long term weekly system for metastock from roy larsen but its full of errors when i tried it in the tradesim system . just took a punt on it for experimental purposes , and roy said he will help with the conversion even though he knows nothing of bullcharts as he said.

ive got windows 7 here and no problems as all ....bloody computers so many variables ..

definitely a learnng curve here ..not with bullcharts , its awesome really..just working out what systems to trade..and learning how to convert them for tradesim...bullcharts gives so many ideas. ive had fcharts for ages but there is no comparison ..