I am running a live account with TradeStation trading the Larry williams Oil Strategy. At the same time, I have developed some of my own strategies and would like to test and optimize them on TradeStation. Is there a suggested method to log into a demo account and test at the same time that I have the live account running?
The following user says Thank You to confusedxx for this post:
One example: you can backtest with a setting "fill limit orders only when price is exceeded" (as opposed to "fill if touched")
So if you backtest with this setting, you won't get limit fills unless your price is exceeded. Now say you run this strategy "live" without adjusting any settings. Going forward it will show limit orders filled as soon as the price is touched. But, if you refresh the chart, the trade will disappear since the backtest rules now apply.
I probably should not have brought up this issue, since the OPs question wasn't directly about this, but I get scared when it sounds like people are using SIM in Tradestation to evaluate a strategy. SIM is good for order testing, etc., but not for P/L evaluation.
The following 2 users say Thank You to kevinkdog for this post:
Thanks...makes sense. Personally, I see this being more of an issue with backtesting process, rules and rather than TS 'live' vs 'demo' mode and one being better/worse than another. That said...i mis-read your original comment to mean the TS demo account was 'bad' in some way due to data differences, etc.
The following 2 users say Thank You to ericbrown for this post:
I was actually referring to back testing to ensure code executed as expected and to see what I could possibly expect ad p/l given the markets I was planning to use. Following successful back testing, I wanted to run in sim mode. I do not want to risk real money with a newly crafted idea and strategy until seeing how it performs for a month or two in sim mode. I need to read the link provided above on this topic to learn.
How do you suggest I "live test" a strategy with live market data but on a simulated account ( basically paper trade)? I realize slippage and touching vs exceeding a price is a point of consideration, but I really want to test out my ideas on the best possible way in a live but simulated trading account. Finally, it seems that is also not possible with TradeStation. Meaning I cannot run my live strategies with real money and also use a simulated account in parallel? Any suggestions for how to better tackle this
The following user says Thank You to confusedxx for this post:
