Hi all,

Just wondering how popular is AmiBroker among traders around here, and if there are any plans for a webinar on it.

Thanks !

did anyone used AmiBroker directly with eSignal ?

equally, AmiBroker supports DDE interfacing. any feedback on this type of interfacing ?

Thanks !

Hi all,

Just wondering how popular is AmiBroker among traders around here, and if there are any plans for a webinar on it.

Thanks !

Yes, I use it as real-time charting platform and for analysis. It easily blows e.g. Ninjatrader and Multicharts out of the water. The speed alone is amazing.

Of course it can be used for chart trading and automatic trading. There are examples on the Internet.
Don't know what you wanna hear about DDE. Well, DDE doesn't provide backfill. It's the nature of DDE. But if the data source provides historical data then you can create import scripts to backfill data with just one click.

Do you know how AmiBroker, Multicharts, and Ninjatrader compare to Tradestation? Thanks.

Do you know how AmiBroker, Multicharts, and Ninjatrader compare to Tradestation? Thanks.

2. TradeStation: I have a lot of time invested in TradeStation and I was already
familar with it's problems - mainly, that over a large test set, TS will return
different test results. I have talked with TS support and posted on the message
board about this, but I never got anyone interested in what I found to be a
critical issue. The results of this test were as expected: I could not get two
results to match. Any time I would refresh data from the TS data servers and run
the test again, I would get a different result. Sometimes it was as much as test
1 being -$190K and test 2 being +$74K. I do not understand how anyone can use
this tool for successful modeling if they are testing over a large dataset;
just making up a number would have been as useful. I even exported and imported
the data to ensure that it wasn't an issue with the TS data servers. Same
inconsistency. I couldn't test all five pairs together since TS does not do
portfolio backtesting. As for time of a single test, it is hard to tell with TS as to what, exactly, it
is waiting for/trying to do at any given moment, but I would say it would
usually take about 2/4M per test (although, I have no idea what it was doing in
that 2/4M since the results it returned seemed random at times).

Do you know how AmiBroker, Multicharts, and Ninjatrader compare to Tradestation? Thanks.

a) Metastock PREV - it was already explained how PREV works in MS and why it is
such a bad idea: Re: [amibroker] MetaStock's PREV

MS prev is there ONLY because they don't have loops. It is thousands of times
SLOWER than loops, because putting PREV anywhere in MS formula causes entire formula to be
re-executed as many times as there are bars loaded.

b) Tradestation
L0 = (1 -gamma)*Price + gamma*L0[1] ;

Tradestation has a hidden, implicit loop trading loop that causes your formula
to be RE-executued EVERY BAR. This implict loop can be observed by increasing CurrentBar variable.
That's is why the statement like above allows recursion but this again causes
unnecessary waste of CPU resources (not as bad as MS PREV, but close) and makes
Tradestation slow.

Now compare that to AmiBroker.
AmiBroker does NOT waste CPU cycles without reason as TS and Metastock.
AmiBroker executes formula ONCE for all bars at once, see:
AmiBroker Knowledge Base AFL execution speed

This is similar in concept to supercomputers doing vector processing (single instructions multiple data).

Now, vectors are processed in parallel, hence no recursion occurs.

But... in places where you really need recursion - you simply write a LOOP, like below:

for( i = 1; i < BarCount; i++ )
L0[ i ] = (1 -gamma)*Price + gamma * L0[ i -1] ;

You see the similarity to Tradestation code ???

But loop in AmiBroker is EXPLICIT. It is much faster than Tradestation because
it does the loop only where/when needed, and only one block (inside loop body) is
re-executed number_of_bars time instead of re-executing entire formula as Tradestation does.

That gives enormous speed gain (orders of magnitude).

Because of local scope, loops in AmiBroker are orders of magnitude faster than
MS PREV and Tradestation grand implicit trading loop.

Bottom line:
AmiBroker of course can do anything that MS or Tradestation does but much
FASTER.

Best regards,
Tomasz Janeczko
amibroker.com

waw,

I was reading the below post about AmiBroker:

Backtesting and Research: MultiCharts or AmiBroker SO I am looking for a faster, more reliable backtesting platform. I currently use NinjaTrader, but find the results often dubious at best, particularly with muti-timeframe and multi-instrument. I am actually happy with NT for live trading (like the …

... probably too much passion in that discussion

My (yet, limited) experience with AmiBroker so far:

- it is the only alternative (I know of) for a starter that wants to learn with a minimum initial investment and:
1) use free intra-day data. AB provides low to 1 minute free charts (via google finance. Yahoo finance is totally unreliable from what I've seen.)
2) Play with backtesting, optimization and other nice functions that usually cost thousands in other software alternatives.
3) They have good support. They replied to all my emails with a constructive attitude.
4) I must admit, there are little glitches here and there in the software, things that may not even be caused by AmiBroker itself, but a combination of factors like where you install the software (folder Program Files vs Program Files x86, or what antivirus you are using). Overall, with some computer knowledge, you'll hit the road running.
5) I still see the overall integration & usability of the software as the main improvement area. I feel like it was done by a programmer for his fellow friends. And there is still plenty of room for improvements in this area Price alone heavily overweight this aspect though.

As I am on a learning curve about trading in general and I don't want to spend tens of thousands on trading software, I much appreciate the value AB offers for its cost. I'm yet to be shown a similar alternative.

I wish I could give feedback about MultiCharts, but MultiCharts is just 25 times more expensive. And I am still a fan of one off charge, full capabilities, don't like to "monthly rent" software while keeping a day job.

"It shows the simulator in action in animation mode. Yes, I added a free running animation mode.

I used a screen recording software program and just recorded it at 10 FPS, since my AB simulation was running at 10 steps per second. It is simulating a Hydro-Pneumatic system. The diagram is a cutaway of a cylindrical mechanism. You dial in the dimensional configuration and it draws it and simulates the work transfer efficiency. The one shown is the simplest configuration.

All the elements were drawn with low level graphics commands. The AFL listing is about 1000 lines, most of it concerned with the UI.

Enjoy the movie, and I hope it inspires you to more possibilities for using AB for doing more than just stock market tasks."

I am working on a project right now that uses AB as a general purpose (non-stock) language to animate the drawing of a mechanical device and graph its performance. It shows the mechanical positions of a hydro-pneumatic cylinder with different configurations that are parameterized with the sliders in the properties window.

I looked all over the web for a simple language that could do this. The key is that 80% of code is usually doing just user interface code. I finally decided that AFL would be the easiest thing for me to write this in. It is not the first time I have used AFL to write a program that has nothing to do with charting stocks.

I did my whole program with just parameter functions, low level Gfx functions and no array arithmetic.

Based on what I found from searching the web, I could see a spinoff of AFL with a few more general language functions (like dimensioned arrays not tied to stocks and a few UI tweaks), to be a useful general interpreter language for easy to write programs to solve custom problems quickly, while still having good execution performance

As much as I dislike MultiCharts actions, at least they never created fake accounts pretending to be users and promote their products.

Mike