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Do You Suggest to Buy Multicharts Adds-on ASP and Backtesting Edition (BTE)?
Hi All,
I am trading manually now using Thinkorswim and plan to switch to automated trading this summer. After some studies, I found that Multicharts can be a good platform to use. I read many posts in the forum, and they are really helpful for me to make decisions.
Here I did not see the discussion on Advanced Strategy Pack (ASP) and Backtesting Edition (BTE). So I wonder if you all buy the ASP and BTE. The ASP is $500 and BTE is $750. They are both expensive. From the MC website, it shows some of the key features of ASP are 1) Portfolio Trader 2) Self-Adaptive Trading 3) Fast Automated Order Execution Switch, 4) Walk-Forward Optimization, 5)Strategy Orders Monitor, 6) Historical Data Downloader with Scheduler, 7) Volume Profile Drawing, 8) Matrix Optimization.
The BTE is to "Get an offline license with all the tools necessary for strategy development, backtesting, and optimization, including 1) Access to historical data, 2) Backtesting and Optimization on charts and in Portfolio Trader, 3) Historical Data Downloader with Scheduler."
So if I want to make extensive backtesting using historical data and perform automated trading using my strategies, it seems like I have to buy both ASP and BTE. The total price will be $2747 with ASP and BTE. This is pretty high. But in the previous posts, I did not see discussions on this, and many people just mention the lifetime license. As a beginner on MC, I hope to get your help on the purchase options. If ASP and BTE are necessary to make backtesting and automated trading? Thanks a lot!
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
You can do backtesting and automated trading with the standard license, the ASP just adds additional options. If you need them personally is something only you can tell for sure. As far as I am aware you can also add packages later if you start with the regular license first and feel you are missing a feature, although this might be more expensive than a package deal.
The BTE as I understand is basically a second license that will not work with realtime data. The idea is that you could use your regular license to trade live and the BTE on a second computer for development or testing.
For Backtesting, much of the work can be done offline, for example using the data in the past 10-20 years. Then we can backtest it in real-time and see if it works as expected. For the standard license, if it only can backtest with limited historical data and mostly used for real-time testing? For example, from the MC website the Data Feed page, the Tradestation provides "minute bars 20 years back, daily bars 45 years back". If I want to backtest a strategy using Tradstation data minute data of the past 20 years, then can we do the backtesting using the standard license?
I am not aware of any limitations in the amount of data you can use for a backtest with the standard license. As far as I am aware the only limitation is the amount of data you can receive from your data provider.
Hopefully this isn’t a thread hijacking but it’s a new thread and mentioned backtesting so I thought it might be a good start.
I’ve been playing around with the self adaptive trading for a strategy that I use intra day. I’ve essentially done my own form of self adaptive trading for years but thought I give the automated module a try.
My dilemma is how to get MC to actually apply my new input values after finishing a periodic re-optimization if they have changed. By this I mean that if these new values have generated a trade in a different direction or have the strategy going from in position to flat etc…how do I get this to happen on the chart automatically at the time of application of the new input values. I’m experimenting with using the Strategy to broker sync while trading in the AA mode with assign initial market position from chart. To keep it simple at this point it’s IOG=False and one data series.
It’s doing something but not what I’m expecting. On several occasions after re-optimization it used the Low level market order as I would expect to get the chart and broker in sync. Other times it seems to take a new trade then immediately thereafter place a low level market order entering in the correct direction and then exiting the trade almost immediately.
Is there a best practice setup that people use to make this happen. I’m guessing SA mode is out. My only other thought is assign initial position from broker but I think I remember reading a few year ago that this system ignores this setting.
Anyway, I’ll report back tomorrow on the new setting but if anyone has any experience with this system that’s will to share how I might set mine up that would be great.
