BTW, all of those SC copies run in less memory and less CPU than POS 7.04.0.0B.2 ever did

Moderator Notice This a thread on Sierra Charts, and we are in "Platform and Indicators". Posts related to brokers have been merge in this thread. Sam

Your bring up good points. While it is nice to save some money getting the platform through a broker, this might not always be desirable. SC is a very appealing option and I must say that I feel good no matter decision I ultimately make here (SC vs MC). As far a support goes, I would think that between the forum here and that of SC's, almost all matters can be addressed, if the broker is ill-equipped to do so. Maybe I'm wrong on that though, but that would be my guess...

Here's a very general example of how I backtest and I'd be curious to know how SC would handle it, if at all. I have a list of about 500 stocks / ETF's that I've qualified as meriting my attention, but only under certain technical conditions, as spelled-out in the strat. So, if we are talking a daily strat, after mkt close, I'll run it against this "portfolio" of symbols to see if there any hits. The strat might be rather basic but could say, identify all that were oversold via RSI below 25, that just crossed above RSI 25, where Chaikin MF has been increasing. Possibly a bullish engulfing candle too... You get the picture. I'd run such a saved strat in the evening to id opportunities for possible stock and / or option responses. I currently do this in Prodigio. It has it's quirky problems though.

Would I be able to do something like this with SC?

I use SC and have no problems with it, and so would support it 100%.
Its cheap, stable, reliable etc;
(my only criticism is that I cannot effectively load equities (for most non USA markets), as its futures and USA focused)

However....as a note on portfolio backtesting....there seem to be very few true portfolio back testing systems available. While some systems claim they can do it, they may just be running through whats is effectively a daily scan and taking all the signals.
A true portfolio system allows you to have rules for which signals to take based on the exisiting portfolio and the days signals as they are given. Otherwise you are never taking into consideration such things as portfolio concentration and correlation issues. You need to be able to have rules for which signals to ignore if the portfolio is full, or which existing positions to replace.
example;
In reality you might have twenty long positions on - lets say your signals tell you to buy another twenty longs. Do you have the cash to do this, do you take them all even though your market exposure doubles? What is your over all exposure? how correlated are you?
For true portfolio testing this needs to be taken into consideration.

I have no experience with the scanning feature, but here is SC's documentation on it:
Sierra Chart - Study Alerts And Scanning

In a recent post on their forum Support says there will be some improvements soon on this.
New to Sierra - Sierra Chart