@rolandw85, sorry that I've flooded responses here, but here is one more. Two additional features in Portfolio Trader is Forward Testing and Automate Order Execution. I don't use either (too long to explain), but the forward testing does just what it implies: it will allow you to do incubation/forward testing. I see it being useful on intraday systems.

vmodus 

@rolandw85 , I will try to answer what I can, as I use MC's portfolio trader a lot. 10. Only Data1 is used for trading signals, as in TradeStation. No, but you can probably do that in your code if you are savvy enough (I have done similar things in TS EasyLanguage). I never used this in TS, but data availability is pretty robust across different timeframes. I suppose it depends on what you are using PriceSeriesProvider for. You can ask someone at MC directly or pop into their forum if you can get access. I have found them to be very responsive. I find the tool limited in a lot of respects. You can have multiple signals (strategies), but you cannot assign symbols to signals, which is what I would use it for (as such, I just have multiple portfolios, one for each signal/system/strategy). Optimization is 'all-or-nothing', meaning you optimize the portfolio, not individual symbols. One of the features I really like is the performance report. It is nearly identical the one in the main application (Portfolio Trader is a stand-alone application), but you drill down into individual symbols to get the performance report for each symbol. Another feature that I like is that there are no charts. I like just the data and results. The Walk-Forward feature is very good and follows best practices for optimization and walk-forward analysis. Compared to TradeStation, Multicharts is, on the whole, much faster. I do optimizations in seconds or minutes, compared to similar optimizations in TS that would take minutes to hours (or days). I would like to have something like Dave Fisher's MultiOpt tool (I have a license, but cannot use as I am not a TS customer any longer), but I find MC is working great for me. I hope this helps.

Thanks Vmodus. Very helpful. I think I’ll get it for a month and if I like it I’ll get the lifetime subscription in the Easter sale.


Thanks again.

Greetings all. I've been a TradeStation customer for 20+ years and as a Canadian resident, was given notice last month that TS would be closing all Canadian resident brokerage accounts. As I have a considerable amount invested in custom EL studies, switching to MultiCharts seems like a no brainer. Big concern though is finding a new data feed service and futures broker (besides IB) that handles Canadian accounts. Anyone have any experience/thoughts? Thanks.

I can't help with Canadian brokers, but will you be able to use the Tradestation 10 platform, if you pay a monthly fee? That might be an alternative for data. You can drive Multicharts with Tradestation data.

I only mention this because if you go to a different data vendor, your strategies could experience different performance due to data (mainly rollover) differences. I've had strategies that looked great in one platform that fell apart in the other platform - all due to data issues.

Just wanted you to be prepared for that. Code usually will transfer with little or no problem, which is good.

Good Luck!

TerryM 

Greetings all. I've been a TradeStation customer for 20+ years and as a Canadian resident, was given notice last month that TS would be closing all Canadian resident brokerage accounts. As I have a considerable amount invested in custom EL studies, switching to MultiCharts seems like a no brainer. Big concern though is finding a new data feed service and futures broker (besides IB) that handles Canadian accounts. Anyone have any experience/thoughts? Thanks.

Hey if you're making the switch, they currently have their annual easter sale open now (literally save $1000). it finishes in the next 2 days i think.

https://www.multicharts.com/traders-blog/easter-sale-2022/

Very interesting discussion. I am currently thinking of going with TS International which is a mix of TS and IB. Will likely trade with MC as I like the platform very much. Does anyone have experience with using TS as data provider, MC for signals and IB as broker? Maybe, this adds to many points of failure as I need to run TS, MC and TWS simultaneously.

DJTrading,

according to the discussion in this thread

Does Anyone Have Experience With Tradestation International?? I was looking for brokers that offered stocks AND futures. Could not find much other than interactive brokers, tradestation and TD ameritrade. Then I bumped into this: They seem to have nice fees, surely beats opening an account at tradestation.com …

the data for TS International is coming from IB. If that is the case, you would not gain anything with your setup, but only add one layer that could fail compared to receiving the data directly from IB.

Regards,

ABCTG

DJTrading 

Very interesting discussion. I am currently thinking of going with TS International which is a mix of TS and IB. Will likely trade with MC as I like the platform very much. Does anyone have experience with using TS as data provider, MC for signals and IB as broker? Maybe, this adds to many points of failure as I need to run TS, MC and TWS simultaneously.

TerryM 

Greetings all. I've been a TradeStation customer for 20+ years and as a Canadian resident, was given notice last month that TS would be closing all Canadian resident brokerage accounts. As I have a considerable amount invested in custom EL studies, switching to MultiCharts seems like a no brainer. Big concern though is finding a new data feed service and futures broker (besides IB) that handles Canadian accounts. Anyone have any experience/thoughts? Thanks.

I was forced to switch to Multicharts from Tradestation a few years back after being with Tradestation for more than 20 years due to them cancelling Canadian accounts.
It was a total blessing in disguise as it is only after you use an alternative platform that you realize what a total POS Tradestation actually is.
Multicharts has been an extremely stable platform (unlike Tradestation), their support blows Tradestation away, the 64 bit platform is lightening fast and if you are so inclined, you can open up a totally new world by delving into their .NET version. I regularly thank Tradestation in my head that they decided to cancel Canadian accounts.

There are a few US brokers who take Canadian accounts - the ones I have been with for the past few years is Edgeclear. Had no issues with them. Data provider is Rithmic and life is good.

Hope this helps.

Regards

True, will need to look further into this. The better option would be IQFeed in this case.
Thanks for the information.

still, a question or concern - is Multicharts still in development, they haven't released anything for a while, and looking at their multicharts.com/pm portal:



8 feature requests is peanuts compared to past releases, making me wonder what are the medium to longer plans ... it doesn't look too bright.