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I am going to start using Trade Station and was looking at some of the tradestation apps (auto trade strategies). Specifically the 3 from Larry Williams of the Williams %R Fame. He must make more trading than selling indicators and he claims on his video to be using the strategies with his money as well.
Before jumping in, is there anyone who can vouch for the success of Larry's strategies or any other Trade Station auto trade strategies?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I have written my own strategies that I have running on TradeStation that trade automatically.
I have looked at several from the App store. Most of them I would not trade with my money.
I did try one called Star ES. It had a pretty good performance report not spectacular but good. I traded it live last summer and according to the author I managed to trade it during the worst draw down. I stopped trading it and was able to track it for a few more weeks and it did not get any better.
If you are able to look at the performance report from Larry, I would ensure you have appropriate slippage, commissions and set the flag to trade through the price to get a fill. If it sill looks good, I would like to see it sim trade for a few weeks. When I last looked at his system he only allows for a few days to trial or not trail at all. I personally did want to trade something I could not see working in a sim account first and prior to paying any fees. Also, if I remember correctly his stop loss for each trade was rather large.
If you move forward, please post back, I would be very interested in your experiencing.
I was also interested in the Star ES system that was mentioned in a previous reply below. I got a free demo and it did good although it is on version 5, so it has had a few upgrades. It trades on the 5M chart and makes an average of 3 trades a day. I ran strategy tester and for the last few years it did great, but when I ran it for 5 years, it did horrible for those first few years. It made less money on the 5 year test than the 3 year test. It did recover but I would never have been able to endure those losing years. The win rate is only around 20% but the wins are much bigger than the losers. Then I found his Eclipse ver. 1 system. This trades on the 15M chart and I think makes 1 to maybe 3 trades a day with a 48% win rate. The wins are larger than the losers but not as large as the STAR systems wins. I ran a 16 year back test and the equity curve looked very nice. Its worst year 2013 it only made $1500 and its best year 2000 it made $31,000 per contract traded in the back test. The first 8 years of my 16 year test it made $103,000 and the last 8 years it made $96,000 so it is almost the same. Looks very stable to me. I can't believe it performed that well for all those years.
I only get a 7 day trial. Yesterday +1.25 points in one trade. Today closed with 6.00 points, the profit target, but may put on another trade.
My question is: Are Tradestation back tests trustworthy? It is allowing for slippage and commissions so it sounds pretty fair to me, but I have traded forex on Metatrader4 and I know for sure their back tests cannot be trusted and are virtually worthless. So is Tradestation fair?
The problems with ANY backtest software (Tradestation, Ninja, Multicharts, etc):
1. If you don't know how the backtest was created, you could be looking at some hindsight developed, over optimized piece of junk. Without knowing specifically HOW it was developed, you just don't know how if you can trust it, other than to track it for 3-6 months in real time (at a minimum).
2. If the developer knows how to fool the backtest engine, then he could easily show a great backtest, but it would never work in real life. For example, with 2 lines of code and no optimizing, I can produce a gorgeous equity curve. Problem is it will never work in the real world.
My advice is always "do it yourself." Then you control HOW the curve was developed. Of course, you have to know how to properly develop a strategy, but that is another story.
If you are set on leasing a strategy, try it live for a few days. Compare live results to the corresponding backtest results. That will likely tell you if item #2 is a problem.
Tradestation has a built in strategy called Price Channel LE and SE that I have used on a 30 min ES or NQ chart.
I also added stops and target strategy with about a $250 stop loss and $150/10% trailing profit target.
Strategy uses limit orders. Worked ok live until, I had it running live while I was at work one day and didn't get a fill ( it was right about 0931am on the NQ). That was a bad day for me.
