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?
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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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I've used my own TradeStation automated strategies - there's nothing wrong with the platform or execution, but that's not saying anything about strategies from a particular vendor.
Here's a suggestion though - Larry Williams has many books published which won't cost you much to buy (you can probably find free pdfs online even). Why not get one of these and test out some of his ideas? If the stuff he claims works in his books tests out, then there's a reasonable chance that his strategies will also work.
For what it's worth, his signature trading style was always the "volatility breakout", so maybe test variations of this also on the assumption that the strategy he is selling is somewhat similar?
David
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Ofcourse. Optimizing one right now. Problem is you cant optimize it over longer than 6 month tick data that is available. So I guess one would have to re-optimize often and keep a close eye. Several optimizations give great results as far as numbers are concerned, but very essential to look at the equity curve, if it looks like crap, its no point.
If anyone else has ideas about optimizing tick charts/ charts with only 6 months data available (other than buying 3rd party 10 year tick data) and the frequency to re-optimize, to use exhaustive versus genetic algo...please pitch in.
Is there any app or program that will optimize for best equity curve (long shot but may be there is one) automatically.
Thanks
I am intermediate, but a beginner at Automated. I use a MovAvg Cross LE & SE no LX/EX Strategy Automated with % Trailing true 50/10 and get GREAT back-testing results, +80% Profitable & Profit Factor +2.5, but run on the simulator the results are not good??? I believe it is in the % Trailing settings? Any suggestions?
as the % Trailing can trigger an exit intrabar, testing without the Look-Inside-Bar backtesting (LIB) feature can give you a large difference between what your tests show and what would happened in reality. Therefore you might want to do your tests using LIB and the highest resolution possible.
I have LIB feature checked. The problem is the strategy is working in the simulator live and the Trade List shows the the strategy working. In the Orders the results is quite different to the negative and not just slippage. The % trailing is closing short. I have tried 30 & 20 minute charts. Any suggestions on the Trailing settings? Thanks.
I spent the last couple of months developing my own automated trading system, and am ready to give it a real market test.
In swing trading on 60-minute and longer time frames, I can get a profit factor between 2.0 to 4.0 and profitable trades of around 40% to 50%. Max drawdown of up to 20%.
In day trading on 1 to 15-minute time frames, I can get a profit factor of 1.3 to 1.8 and profitable trades of around 40% to 45%. Max drawdown between 10% to 25% on that system.
I have been creating Auto strategies on the TS simulator for 6 months. I have used all the most popular ones with thousands of setting combinations. They have produced some great back-testing, but when trading them live on the simulator the results are not good. I understand back-testing is not an exact reflection of live trading, but the strategy works fine and the Trade is not executing the same. I have made some progress and with some slippage it is improving. Example RSI: All Trades Adjusted Profit Factor = 3.1 Percent Profitable = 78%. This is a one month chart, but the results on a 3 year chart are comparable. The problem is nothing works well without % Trailing. Yet % Trailing seems to trigger some false Stops?
Your work with the Auto Trading using ETFs sounds interesting. I’d like to have more details.
I would recommend NEVER using % Trailing functions. The only way it is accurate is if you use it with 1 tic LIBB. Even then I do not trust it.
Over the past 10 years, I bet I have seen 100s of people show terrific Strategy Performance Reports that had % trailing or $ trailing. Not one worked with real money.
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I have been trading for over 20 years. I just started trading futures last Sept. and lost. I am too emotional trading manually. In Jan. I started working in the simulator on Auto Trading. Like you said great success in BT, but died in real-time. I has great success with range bars, but same results live. Non of my systems work without % Trailing.
Do I just give up? Any suggestions? Back to options? Thanks for the comment it is the first real help I have received. TS techs are great at the platform, but I did not find one who seemed to know Auto Trading.
Developing a trading system correctly is a lot different than what the retail platforms teach (the whole platform setup encourages you to pull up a chart, add some strategies, optimize it to death, and then trade the best case). That never works.
Check the Elite webinar section - there are a ton of good webinars on system building...
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Just a thought, Perhaps, instead of using built-in TS, create your own exit signals that constantly update as the chart progresses. Then, as part of the strategy, you have the exit signal as your LX and SX. Seems you would be in control of the "trailing exit" signal.
