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Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Interesting. I will get you a reply shortly. Thanks!
The upgrades to ST ELITE usually happen within 3 weeks of the innovations we make in the standalone version. Since these were just added days ago, expect to see them toward mid or end of February.
It certainly can. It was made for it. Talk to your local branch manager identified on your statements. Or post any further questions here.
D
This reply is written by our partner Dave Mabe at StockTickr.com:
"Hi David:
Yes, you do have to have TWS (Trader Work Station - IB's trading platform) up and running to use the robot. You can, however, have it running on a different PC than the robot and connect to it over the network. That might be an option if he feels it hinders performance to run it on the same PC.
Dave"
Thanks for your question. If you have more you can ask them here and I'll pass them along.
I'll put that suggestion and vote into our box. We have our annual planning meeting this month. Thanks!
I know its not immediate but it is in the plans for the future.
The answer is to further discriminate the universe of stocks for that strategy by selecting either more filters OR within the selected filters increasing the thresholds.
FOr example you could increase the ratio of the Min Current Volume to a higher number like '2' or '3'. Read the online Help section to understnad what those values and the filter mean.
Good luck!
I dont know if I undersatnd. You will be able to use the strategies found anywhere else we post them (twitter or blog, etc.)
You'll simply open the link in a browser and see the configuration of the strategy or read the description of the strategy in our articles. It's easy to copy what makes up the strategy and then recreate them in E*TRADE's Strategy Scanner or TI PRO.
I would aim for higher scores like in the 90s or above. At lower scores the strategy and/or your modeled trading plan for it are not as 'elegant' or effective as it could be. It's an indicator that there's more refining to do.
D
Great question. Many ways to answer.
Let's work backwards. The casino factor is described in the OddsMaker manual. Its worth a read here: http://www.trade-ideas.com/OddsMaker/Help.html
The Casino Factor in a nutshell is a confidence (or z)score that describes the probability that the next result falls within the averages for winning and losing trades in the backtest.
Here is a great post we wrote awhile back about how to evaluate OddsMaker results that is still true today: http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/2007/01/2-x-2-decision-box-for-determining.html
Additionally I judge a good strategy in the market based in part on the total number of trades the strategy generated over the 3week/15 trading days. In your case this is 894 trades which is on the high side. I prefer to find strategies that produce trades in the sub-300 or even under 100. Your positive results in terms of net winnings are the result of alot of trades, but you can have a better result with fewer trades and perhaps improve your odds at the same time. Ways to reduce the trade total are using more parameters in the filter section such as higher Min Current volume requirements.
I also notice a rather large worst trade amount. This leads me to suggest perhaps a better stop loss target. You may want to not express it as a percentage but as a dollar amount, like $0.75 and see what that does.
Good luck.
Yes. Here's a good place to start: our blog.
Q2. We've posted strategy discussions in this support forum in the past, but its a bit hard to search and find them. We have a long list of posts on our blog: http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/ about strategies and trading plans. Look at the right hand side of the blog under the section, Categories, and you will find a link to take you to all the posts about each topic.
Thank you very much! Reading this in the morning beats a shot of espresso anyday! Thanks for the feedback.
As you know nothing stands still at Trade-Ideas. There is momentum towards the direction you describe at TI & Scottrade - it will just take its own timeline that is not completely known at the moment.
If you want a peek at what automation can look like, follow our regular video posts on the Trade-Ideas YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TradeIdeas
These are great short clips of some powerful things automation is allowing us to do.
Also check our blog at http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/; follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TradeIdeas; and at this space for the latest news as it develops.
Thanks again.
D
Good questions. Q1: The 2 applications are practically the same. The only real differences come in the presentation of some aspects of the tool (e.g., History feature, symbol lists, etc.) but these are very small. The list of pre-configured strategies I believe is also slightly different. One large difference is the absence of the 'Collaborate' feature which allows you to share strategies with others quickly and import strategies through a copy and paste process. That's about it.
What is important is that both applications have the same alerts and the same filters.
Q2. We've posted strategy discussions in this support forum in the past, but its a bit hard to search and find them. We have a long list of posts on our blog: http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/ about strategies and trading plans. Look at the right hand side of the blog under the section, Categories, and you will find a link to take you to all the posts about each topic.
If interested you can also follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/TradeIdeas
There are many ways to model an uptrend. It depends on your trading time frame. You could make the uptrend in weeks (Min Up from 200/50/20 SMA filter); days (min Up Days filter and/or Min Position in Daily Range); or minutes (Up from Close/Open filter and/or Min Up candles 5/10/15/30 Min candles filter).
http://www.trade-ideas.com/Help.html
As for the trigger event, the pullback, try using the 75% Pullback from Highs. This should do the trick!
D
I forwarded your message here to an appropriate contact at Genesis. We'll see. They have much potential to cut the knees of places like ToS or really any other broker; Genesis is on the right track with their growing realization that the best development and thinking regarding certain aspects of trading is not necessarily inside their 4 walls.
Thanks
D
That's a good idea (imbalances as filter) that I will put into the queue. This data is also a function of the vendor we use to process our exchange data. We can look into receiving more of this data.
Thanks
D
There is no 3rd party interface to TI Pro. We’ve looked into it, and we may return to it. 3rd party integration is always challenging because of all of the different tools out there.
Very vague strategy so I had to fill in with some things (for instance, what alert or event would you want to see given the filter descriptions you make)?
Here is what I came up with:
http://www.trade-ideas.com/View.php?O=8000000000000000000000000_1d_0&MinPrice=5&MaxSpread=10&MaxDNbbo=.1&MinVol=300000&MinTRangeP=200&MinUp=2&MinFCD=.05&MinRPD=75&Min15Sma20a200=.2&WN=Up+Trend+%26+Wide+Range
With regard to Genesis - we've talked to them for years, but they seem too busy to ever get things off the ground! Perhaps they listen better to customer suggestions . . .
It's actually the other way around.
T-I runs as many bots as you'd like, each with its own trade instructions per backtested strategy. There's no limit to the amount of strategies you can automate and 'put on the playing field'.
Perhaps if you described in more detail what you're trying to do, I can offer a more detailed response.
If you don’t want to display our GUI, you don’t have to. You can create the window but leave it invisible. This will not take much memory or CPU.
We always recommend that you display out alert window when you are developing your product. This helps during debugging. If you want to hide it later, that’s up to you.
You can enter a string to configure the alerts. Look at the DataConfig property. This is equivalent to the collaborate window in TI Pro. TI Pro uses this property to load and save layouts.
If you want, you can use our Config window without using the rest of our GUI. There is a function call to activate this, just like if the user requested it from the menu.
There is a way to create the data config strings yourself, without using our GUI. We don’t recommend it because it’s a lot of work. Take a look at http://www.trade-ideas.com/Config.php. When you hit “Accept Changes” that will send a post string back to the web server. You can create a string in exactly that format and you can pass it to the DataConfig property or to the collaborate window. The string you create will look a little different than the ones that come from TI Pro, but the server will accept either format.
I'd add that we are sensitive and not quite comfortable with the idea of automated trading without the benefits our backtesting tool, The OddsMaker, affords those who assess probabilities of their strategies with it.
Automating without the backtesting results is like handling a gun without any training or practice at the firing range - an unnecessary gamble.
You could create a symbol list with that one symbol, than use it in a strategy where all the alerts were selected (no filters), than run the strategy and select 'History' to see all that was reported.
Or you could easily visit the website and enter your stock (say AAPL) here:
http://www.trade-ideas.com/SingleSymbol.php?symbol=AAPL&more=1
SOrry for the delay. We are trying to recreate the problem and find a solution for you. Will be back with a post/answer!
We're working on a response for you. Thanks for your patience.
It depends on the timeframe with which you want to see the trend. If its multi-day you could select our Min Up Days filter. If you are looking at intraday trends, you could select any of the 5 10 15 30 minute candlestick filters that are Min Up filters.
Those should get you where you are going.
BEst,
D
E*TRADE subsidizes its customers use of the backtesting tool, The OddsMaker, for its customers. It is a compelling value!
There are several issues with the price column. We are working on some of these. However, the alert window is not a full blown analytics product. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we link with some products and embed in other products. That way you can click on an alert to see a chart, level 2 data, or even an execution panel.
What are you doing with the price? If you’re making broad statements, like “I don’t like to trade expensive stocks”, I recommend that you use the filters. Set the max price in the window to $25. If you’re looking for something more specific, then our linking is the way to go. So, Dell was trading at $10.24 when it made an alert. Is that good or bad? Where was it two minutes ago? What does the inside market look like now. This is where your trading application can help.
The alerts are joined with an “and” and the filters are joined with an “or”. Often you can find the same or similar conditions in both places. If you need help modeling your strategy in our system, please sign up for the one-on-one training session. This is available to all new Trade-Ideas users.
We have looked at the idea of joining multiple alerts when they all happen at the same time. That is not part of the Trade-Ideas product at this time. However, you can always use our API to create something like that. http://www.trade-ideas.com/ForDevelopers/ You can use our servers to do the heavy number crunching, and you can use your own computer to add the finishing touches.
The backtester can limit itself to specific stocks. Use the “Symbol Lists” feature on the config window.
It’s interesting that you are talking about shorter term trades. Most of our traders are asking for longer term trades, and we have some projects in work for that. We appreciate your feedback here.
We also have a lot of short term traders. They typically use the breadth of the market to multiply their winnings. Since each of their individual trades makes less than a long term trade, they need a lot of them. Also, they typically run multiple strategies on the same day. So they might buy and sell the same stock more than once a day, if it is acceptable to different strategies. Again, one of our trainers can give you more specifics. Our head trainer does a lot of automatic trading, all based on the back tester.
If you are a paid subscriber, you can schedule a training session with him for an hour. His email is jhodge"at"trade-ideas.com
We have some ability to show you the details of every trade that the backtester makes. Currently this is a very advanced feature. Again, the trainer can show you if you need it.
The API is used primarily as a way to communicate with our alert servers and receive the information in a different platform than TI PRO. It's mainly used by partners who want to see TI alerts inside their application.
Writing your own scans in Trade-Ideas is as simple as right-clicking in an alert window and selecting 'Configure', but you already knew that. :)
Let's see. Starting at the bottom:
I like your use of the "20 period SMA crossed below 200 period SMA (5 minute)" - that's what it's supposed to do.
You can use window specific filters to show stocks sloping in specific direction. For example if you are using the "20 crossed BELOW 200" alert, you'd want to reinforce that downward movement with filters. One easy filter to select is the Max Up from Open filter. Put a value of -0.05 in this filter to only show stocks that are down 5 cents or more since the open. You could also describe what the last 5, 10, 15,30,60 minute candles look like by entering negative numbers in the Max Price filters for these periods.
That should help.
Your listed items are almost modeled in Trade-Ideas.
1) Use the filters describing the behavior of the S&P, Dow, and NASDAQ to only show you alerts when these markets are moving in the same direction (in this case down)
2) While we dont have an alert for opposite direction to 200 SMA, we do have great alerts like the standard deviation alerts (BT) and positive/negative divergence from VWAP that do the same thing from a slightly different basis. Worth checking out.
3) Consolidation alerts are good for finding 'balance' states where buyers and sellers are evening out.
Good luck
Yes it will.
Here are the alerts of which you describe:
http://www.trade-ideas.com/Help.html#GBBOT
We cover the CDN exchanges.
Here are some scans containing CDN stocks:
http://www.trade-ideas.com/SingleAlertType/GRTOP/Rectangle_top.html
We do have
an API for uploading symbol lists to the web site.
This option can run in parallel with TI Pro without kicking you off:
http://www.trade-ideas.com/Integration/#Upload It was made to be the
simplest possible solution.
We also have a full scale API at http://www.trade-ideas.com/ForDevelopers/
but that is probably overkill.
And, of course, if you don't need complete automation you can use the "Load
From File..." button in TI Pro's symbol list editor.
There is no way for us to automatically suck in a symbol list.
Yes, two ways:
1. You could use these alerts here: http://www.trade-ideas.com/Help.html#ECAY2 after you create a custom symbol list of the stocks found in these daily scans:
50 Day Moving Average Crosses 200 Day Moving Average
20 Day Moving Average Crosses 200 Day Moving Average
20 Day Moving Average Crosses 50 Day Moving Average
http://www.trade-ideas.com/StockInfo/_PredefinedFilters.html
This will give a universe of stocks close to crossovers. The alerts will tell you when it happens.
2. You can set the distance up or down (slope) away from several SMA benchmarks with these filters: http://www.trade-ideas.com/Help.html#WSF_MinMA200P
Good luck
Not exactly. The first number is the daily sum of your profit or loss for that day (it will be coded either green or red depending how well your strategy and the trading rules you applied fared).
In your example if the number was green 58, you would have made 58 points on 100 trades.
As a tip when I see 100 trades in a day for a strategy I'm testing, I know I should go back and tighten up my filters - that's just too many trades to ask a trader to do in a day. Reducing the number of alerts will make the results of the backtest a bit more real.
We also call it the 'Casino Factor'. It is the % chance that the next trade's results will fall within the averages reported for avg winner/avg loser, etc. Similiar to a z-score in statistics.
It is possible and this video should answer your question in good detail:
http://www.trade-ideas.com/VideoHelp/Menu.html?video=Trade-Ideas%20Pro:%20Columns:%20Quality
Got an answer for you below:
"Unfortunately that’s not possible.
We link to a specific window. If you close that window, and open a similar one later, we won’t be able to figure that out. If you close the other application and reopen it, we certainly won’t be able to figure that out. The best solution is to keep TI and the other application running.
That’s the best we can do with most applications. However, we are working on a DDE link for TI Pro. This won’t help with 3rd party applications like most trading platforms. But if you write your own spreadsheet or software, you will be able to link this way. The DDE links will be remembered as part of your layout."
SOrry for missing your earlier question. Right now you have to set up the crosshairs at the beginning of your session. Once done, you don't have to do anything else to maintain the link until you close the applications.
I will put your idea in the suggestion box.
Your new question: The OddsMaker will allow you to only backtest times of the day you specify. As far as allowing Trade-Ideas to only scan at certain times of the day, I would suggest simply minimizing the window during the times you do not want to see alerts.
Thanks. We'll log it as a good suggestion (all suggestions are good BTW!)
The answer is found by using our Running Up alerts. These alerts compare normal run rates of stocks (price movement up/down over time and their rate of acceleration). Choosing for example the Running Up Intermediate alert and using a ratio value of 2 means that the Current run rate must be twice the rate of its Historical run rate.
Adjusting the ratio value between 1 (average) and any value upward is our equivalent of setting the angle of ascent - 45 degrees or otherwise.
Here is the definition of the alert: http://www.trade-ideas.com/Help.html#RUI
As you can see we've got other period crossover alerts as well as ways in which to place the stocks any distance from the benchmark SMAs.
As with all suggestions, we will record this one and put it into our development queue.
Thanks!
OddsMaker User Guide is offered from the homepage. Here is the direct link: http://www.trade-ideas.com/OddsMaker/
You should also subscribe to the blog (accessible from the homepage). http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/
Lots of information about OddsMaker is posted there.
As for automation and Scottrade - anything's possible. Stay tuned.
You are correct. From the OM Manual:
"Rules
The Odds Maker follows very specific rules for entering into a trade. It starts with the earliest alerts and moves to the latest alerts. Typically there are two to three weeks worth of history in the database. The Odds Maker does not look at any data for the current trading day. It starts looking for the alerts you specify at the time you specify. Once it enters a position for a specific stock symbol, it will not look at that stock symbol again for the rest of the day. It will not enter more than 100 positions each day. Each day starts fresh; you can enter a new trade for the same stock symbol each day."
We draw the line at 100 currently b/c we think its unrealistic that a trader would be trading 100 times a day to achieve a superior return. There are exceptions but that's not how we designed the tool. Thanks