Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Financial Trading Software?

Posted by Cliff on from the not-spending-money-to-make-money dept.

finance-geek asks: "What software do you use for trade evaluation? Are there any good free programs out there? I am a former programmer now working at an investment fund, and I am shocked at the limited number of applications for evaluating and back-testing trading models. We currently use Wealth Lab , but since they were recently purchased by Fidelity, we are less certain about the future of their customer service. I checked out SourceForge.net but only a few programs looked interesting, and it will take me a while to evaluate them. Any suggestions?"

48 comments

  1. ETF Timing by (eternal_software) · · Score: 2, Informative

    Although it doesn't let you input your own data, I have found ETF Timing's (www.etftiming.com) approach to trading logical and accurate. They provide market timing on ETFs (sorta like mutual funds, but traded like a stock), and have been quite accurate during the length of my subscription (about 6 months).

    It's not free, and I'm not generally one to plug a specific site or product, but it is on-topic.

    1. Re:ETF Timing by afabbro · · Score: 4, Informative
      Slight correction: ETFs are Exchange Traded Funds, which are a basket of stocks put together as a sort of mini-index. You can buy them through nearly any brokerage.

      You can market time them. You can market time anything. That doesn't make it a good idea. You need extraordinary gains to overcome brokerage fees and taxes (which are higher since you're not holding them for at least a year).

      If you want my advice...read _A Random Walk Down Wall-Street_ and unless you have the equivalent of several full-time jobs to devote on an ongoing basis, buy broad indexes (e.g., Wilshire, with S&P 500 being a second choice) and get on with your life. If you're socking away a thick 401K + Roth IRAs for most of your working life, you'll retire rich and making 12% instead of 10.5% (historical S&P 500 average) isn't going to make that much of a difference...but making 3% once you factor in your losses from amateur play sure will.

      All deference to the Warren Buffets of the world aside, very (very!) few pros, usually backed by huge research desks, beat the S&P 500 over the long term. That's just as true for small funds as large ones.

      Again, _A Random Walk Down Wall Street_ is the best book on investing I've ever read and I highly recommend it.

      --
      Advice: on VPS providers
    2. Re:ETF Timing by Sanction · · Score: 2, Informative

      While "random walk" is interesting from a theoretical standpoint, it is no more gospel than the "efficient market" theory or others. I would highly recommend it as an interesting book.

      The one point I really must take issue with is that the difference between 10.5% and 12% is minimal. If you start saving for retirement at 25 with a small account, say $5000, and contribute $200 monthly until retirement at 65, that extra 1.5% will translate to an additional $1,155,622 at retirement. That is well worth the extra work for me. You do suffer some slippage from brokerage fees, but these days they are pretty minimal. I think far too much weight is given to tax concerns. Regardless of the rate you pay, profit is profit, and a 25% gain on a transaction is still a very healthy return even after fees.

      I'm not advocating "market timing" as it is often used, and definitely not day trading, but someone with a solid grounding in fundamental analysis to pick stocks and technical analysis to know when to get in and out of the market can do very well. While institutional investors may have a hard time upon occasion, small investors are able to invest in lots of things that mutual funds are not allowed to invest in because they would hold too large of a position. Snagging promising small caps based on fundamentals and exiting on technicals after they grow enough to be picked up by the big fish can usually get you far better returns than any mutual fund can. It does take some time and education, but we all need time for some hobby or another ;)

      --
      Well I'm the doctor and I say you're dead, so shut up and take it like a man!
    3. Re:ETF Timing by thefirelane · · Score: 1

      I've skimmed, but never fully read 'Random Walk'.

      A Book I would recommend for new investors is Peter Lynch's One up on Wall Street

      Firstly, it explains simple economic fundamentals for those who are not aware of them.

      Secondly, and more importantly... it explains something important about why people loose a lot of money on Wall Street: They compete against the pros on Wall Street. Don't invest in IBM, or Ford, or the big blue chips because thousands of analysts who are better at these things are doing so also.

      Peter Lynch explains how to use your status as an amateur as an advantage.

    4. Re:ETF Timing by Spunk · · Score: 1

      And for a whole community of those with a similar philosophy, try the Motley Fool.

  2. Your answer is obvious... by Kevin+Burtch · · Score: 2, Insightful


    The most likely reason for a lack of free software for this application is it's not common for someone to have experience programming and this sort of thing.

    You are in this unique position, so I would recommend you start such a project yourself.

    --
    - Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
    1. Re:Your answer is obvious... by michael_cain · · Score: 1
      The most likely reason for a lack of free software for this application is it's not common for someone to have experience programming and this sort of thing.

      I would modify this statement to say that it is not common for someone to be (a) an experienced programmer, (b) working in the investment field, and (c) not tied up with a company that insists on keeping the development work private. There are lots of firms doing lots of work to try and identify profitable patterns in stock, bond and index prices (ETFs effectively falling into the last category). Read Thomas Bass' The Predictors for an example of the struggles to build a business around such work, and the level of high-powered mathematicians and programmers that have been involved in the past. I would go even further and state that there are lots of hobbyist efforts in this field, but the successful hobbyists are also motivated to keep their work secret -- they did not do the work in order to demonstrate that it could be done, they did it to make money. If you give away your code, others can use it to discover the same patterns; if enough people do that, the pattern will eventually be traded out of profitability.

      An afternoon with Google will turn up an enormous number of software products employing a wide range of techniques to search for profitable patterns: genetic algorithms, neural networks, etc. Ditto for underlying structures whose parameter spaces can be searched: Elliot waves, Bollinger bands, every kind of combination of moving averages you can imagine, fractals, etc. Not to be discouraging, but going over the same search grounds that have been worked to death is not the way to succeed in the original goal (find profitable patterns). Productive results are much more likely to come from identifying new types of patterns, which almost guarantees that they are not discoverable by the existing set of tools.

    2. Re:Your answer is obvious... by Kevin+Burtch · · Score: 1


      I would modify this statement to say that it is not common for someone to be ...(c) not tied up with a company that insists on keeping the development work private.

      Well, the poster did say that (s)he is a "former programmer", so (s)he doesn't appear to be under (her/)his company's thumb in (her/)his current position.

      Then again, it does look like (s)he's trying to make a recommendation of software to evaluate to the company... so the company is already looking for software on the outside... so the below statement is negated anyways.

      If you give away your code, others can use it to discover the same patterns; if enough people do that, the pattern will eventually be traded out of profitability.

      I used to think that... until I had a long chat with a friend of mine who makes his living (even during/after the market crash!) doing nothing but trading stocks.
      I asked him why he posts his recommendations to an open public forum (thinking as you do that it would be bad).
      He said that the best thing that can happen is having everyone else buy when (well, immediately after) he does, as it creates a demand for the stock, which drives the price up quickly.
      The worst that can happen, is people ignore his post and nothing happens other than he gets a good deal (assuming he's "read" the market correctly).

      Either way, (s)he needs to sell (her/)his company on the benefits of releasing Open Source software, which could provide considerable improvement to the software with minimal internal effort.
      Since this software is obviously not part of their core business (they're not a software producing company, they're looking to buy it), they would not be losing anything by releasing it under an Open Source license.

      --
      - Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
  3. Or better yet by BoomerSooner · · Score: 1

    Simply subscribe to an online service through your brokerage company. They generally offer a wealth of information.

  4. Let me know if you find one. by abrotman · · Score: 1

    This is a great area where an open source app would be found. You could get the bigger companies like ML,Vanguard,Fidelity, etc to fund an app that they could all share and return. But realistically, will they .. No. I work for a company that does some financial software consulting. These people guard thier data very closely, because that's what matters to the managers. Having somehting in an open format lets you move to another app and loses that subscription fee they all covet. This is going to end up being an app that someone who works for a company like mine does on the side(and probably breaks thier contract in the process). You would think an app running on GTK/Qt with a PostgreSQL backend could do all of this. But I still haven't seen anyone even interested in it.

  5. Data is the challenge, not the software... by kjeldahl · · Score: 3, Informative

    Based on my experience, the challenge is not the software but getting access to updated, correct and historical data. Mechanical Investing is a disipline that seeks to make investment decisions based on objective rules rather than subjective measures (typically "chart reading"), and attempt to measure the success of a strategy with extensive backtesting using historical data. Currently, the most common data sources are ValueLine reports, Stock Investor PRO (from aaii.com) or IBD (investor.com). Getting access to historical data, keeping the data clean and current and "normalize" it for any changes the providers do over time (and they DO change their formats every few years) is the big challenge, not making the software that uses that data to simulate strategies.

    And if you want intra-day data, the data problems become even bigger. I guess quite a few of the Technical Analysis services have historical data for testing TA models, but from what I have found there are few cheap and good sources for fundamental company data which also offer historical data.

    1. Re:Data is the challenge, not the software... by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 1

      If you have the $$,$$$, Bloomberg is basically the premier source of financial data. This is the company that was founded by the current mayor of New York. They have tons of built-in analysis tools that you can apply to baskets of portfolios that you put together. If you have very specific needs, they offer a DDE service that lets you download data into Excel so you can do your own thing. I track about 600 or so closed end funds using our Bloomberg terminal and a little model I whipped up in Excel.

      The fact that the terminal is basically a modified X-server will also appeal to your inner geek.

      --
      Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
  6. As somebody who writes this stuff during the day.. by cmowire · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The real problem is getting a reliable (i.e. non screen-scraped from Yahoo and preferebly scrubbed for accuracy) set of data and storing it.

    And, even if they'd *like* to, exchange rules *forbid* vendors from giving away real-time (i.e. non delayed-by-20-minutes) feeds.

    I think, for the most part, if you don't have a lot of money, sophisticated tools are a waste of time, because you'd get better results putting them into mutual funds, bonds, ETFs, and savings accounts. If you've got a lot of money, the cost for some good tools (and a data vendor who properly scrubs the data) is money well spent.

    --
    Gentoo Sucks
  7. It sounds like you're trying to game the system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hope you realize that as soon as the masses get a program that allows them to successfully game the system, the FTC will immediately outlaw day trading and/or computerized trades. They only reason they allow it right now is the fact that most people lose money.

    Food for thought.

    1. Re:It sounds like you're trying to game the system by spencerogden · · Score: 1

      Its not like the FTC is running a casino. What do they have to gain by people losing money?

      --

      Spencer Ogden

    2. Re:It sounds like you're trying to game the system by perlchild · · Score: 1

      Someone else won that money, you buy a stock certificate, whose value is "x piece of y company", that's why they call it "trade". The value of the market sometime fluctuates, but's it's more of a perceived value/goodwill kind of intangible way(and someone has to give real money first, for that to be won, just like someone refusing to give equivalent money, causes it to be lost. When you buy x at y, and have to sell x at y-5, you may have lost, but someone who buys x at y-5 and sells it at y again, gains money. The exchanges have rules that determine how much info they can give over what time, mostly to prevent fowl play, but also to protect their "partners" who supply them with services in exchange for exclusivity etc...

    3. Re:It sounds like you're trying to game the system by cmowire · · Score: 1

      That's not actually how the stock market works.

      You have to remember that the stock market is not a zero-sum game. It doesn't help that there's no good way to value a corporation, which clouds things slightly.

      However, the "value" of a company changes over time. I put that in quotes, because there's no exact number that your average trader can figure out, but for convenience, we'll assume that there is. When you buy a stock, you are paying $X for $Y of value, where X > Y.

      Now, let's say that nobody has bought or sold the stock, but the stock price has gone up in price. What happened? Well, sometimes that means that the stock is in the middle of a bubble and is trading too far above real value and is due for a crash. But sometimes that just means that the value of the company has increased. For example, the company could have twice the sales this year as last year. This means that your stock is suddenly more valuable.

      If the value doesn't change, then we are talking about a zero-sum game (i.e. gambling) Generally, day trading is most likely to be in this area. However, if the value does change, then everybody wins and nobody actually loses money (Not even the customers, who are just exchanging a service for money)

      I mean, who lost money so that you can earn interest on your savings account? You lent the bank money, they pay you interest for the service and then proceed to loan out your money to other who pay *them* for the service.

      The big thing about the rules for information is that it's necessary for everybody to have a potentially equal crack (assuming you want to pay for the databases) at the information. Protecting their "partners" is not really a part of it, especially because it's the federal government who is actually requiring the information to be filed.

      The only real exchange-specific rules are about who is allowed to view the data in "real time", because that's a valuable commoditiy. Which is generally a one-sided thing -- you pay the exchange a certain amount per real-time user, they give you the real time data. Anybody with the cash who follows the rules (i.e. there are a bunch of requirements about how you can display a price depending on what kind of trade the last one was) can sign up.

      --
      Gentoo Sucks
  8. GeniusTrader, and optsys (soon) for options... by Stile+65 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm glad I saw this thread.

    First, check out GeniusTrader, which is a very usable tool for backtesting strategies.

    A friend of mine and I are writing software for backtesting options trading strategies. It will also be GPLed and some of the architecture is based on the way GeniusTrader did things. GeniusTrader is written in Perl and optsys is being written in C++.

    optsys, or what's been done of it (it's in maaaaaaaajor pre-alpha state right now, most features aren't even working yet) is available here, but since I'm running the server on my home PC, it's only up about 14-18 hours a day. GeniusTrader, however, is immediately usable and they have quite a developer/user community now.

    --
    I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
    1. Re:GeniusTrader, and optsys (soon) for options... by willis · · Score: 1

      Hiya, I took at quick look at your stuff, but I wasn't sure what you are trying to do -- what type of option simulations / backtesting are you guys trying to make possible? Are they Black-Scholes/Greek based? volatility estimation? gamma trading optimization? Just curious...

      --

      there is no thing
      what else could you want?
    2. Re:GeniusTrader, and optsys (soon) for options... by Stile+65 · · Score: 1

      Actually, I bought $500 worth of data (4.5 years) from Prophet.net. The package is supposed to make simulations possible against real historical options data like what I bought.

      Other than that it'll be just like stock trading. If you want to simulate gamma scalping, you'll be able to. If you want to simulate trading various spreads under different market conditions, you'll be able to do that too. I don't foresee the toolkit doing any kind of calculations on options other than what price they're bought and sold at - that part will be up to whatever strategy you decide to test. I have some strategies that I'd like to backtest now, but they need a good collection of real historical options data (not theoretic) and a set of tools for using it effectively. That's what we're trying to build.

      --
      I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
    3. Re:GeniusTrader, and optsys (soon) for options... by willis · · Score: 1
      What did you get? tick data for options w/ synchronous stock prices? or daily close? Did you get size information?

      Sorry for the question overload, just curious.

      --

      there is no thing
      what else could you want?
    4. Re:GeniusTrader, and optsys (soon) for options... by Stile+65 · · Score: 1

      It's not tick data, it's end of day data and no synchronous stock prices. However, it's very easy to write a quick Perl script to download stock/split/dividend data from Yahoo, and the data is better quality than the stuff you can get from a lot of vendors.

      The data I bought from Prophet contains volume and open interest data for options. It's not completely clean, so I'm going to have to scrub some of it, and it's a bit of a pain to work with, but I'm getting there.

      If you have more questions, by all means e-mail me. alex[at]ultracheapstuff[dot]com. :)

      --
      I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
  9. Excel by spencerogden · · Score: 1

    Based on friend's experience in this are, I think so much heavy processing goes on in Excel, and is of such a general nature, that specialized tools don't get made.

    --

    Spencer Ogden

    1. Re:Excel by Jules+Labrie · · Score: 1
      Right. Excel is the Swiss Army Knife of each banker, and is surely by these peoples more used than the mail programm or Word. Something like emacs for the geeks !

      Open Office gives the possibilty to use a lot of powerfull databases trough an Access-like interface, without the poor limits of Access. All of this is well integrated in a Spreadsheet environment. Maybe some people have began to do interesting things with that...

  10. Some software ideas by MacRonin · · Score: 3, Informative
    One i've been meaning to check out is

    TA-Lib: Technical Analysis Library at http://ta-lib.org/

    Windows and Linux technical analysis open-source software library allowing to maintain and process financial data. Provides RSI, MACD, Stochastic, moving average... plus SQL, ASCII, Yahoo! stock market data access. Works in C/C++, Perl, .NET. Source code included.

    Another: http://eiffel-mas.sourceforge.net/

    and one more library: http://quantlib.org/

  11. Ask on Wilmott.com by willis · · Score: 1

    You might want to ask this question on the Wilmott Software Forum. There's a decent number of quants and quantitative developers over there, and the the archives will be useful, too.

    --

    there is no thing
    what else could you want?
    1. Re:Ask on Wilmott.com by V_M_Smith · · Score: 1

      While you're there, check out this thread for a quant's-eye view of "technical analysis" which is being lauded in another thread.

  12. why trade? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You do realize that unless you are professional trader (who has access to data seconds before it goes out to individual investors) you are playing a losing game? Roughly 70% of individual traders lose money, once you figure in taxes and comissions. Think about it: if RANDOMLY pick a basket of stocks, buy and hold for 5-10 years, you will most likely come out AHEAD of a majority of active traders. If you buy and hold an *index fund* and the market goes up, you will outperform traders.

    Sure, buy-and-hold doesnt "feel" like you're "doing something", but don't let that fool you.

    It's like dieting. The only way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories, everything else builds on that foundation. There are no quick fixes or "secrets" that some people know that others don't.

    Now, day-trading can be FUN (I do it occasionally, even options, but never expecting a profit) but you have to realize you are PAYING for that entertainment. It's easier just to do paper trades.

    I bet the reason there is so little open-source or free trading software is that a lot of this trading software is developed strictly to sucker YOU out of your money. Back-testing strategies? You can't learn anything about the future by past behavior.

    My recommendation is to write your own trading software and get rich. You won't get rich trading, that's for sure.

  13. Technical Analysis? Why not buy lottery tickets? by Fished · · Score: 2, Informative
    here's my unrelated, off-topic, unsolicited opinion - your mileage may vary.

    I've watched several people go broke on the gospel of technical analysis. To me, the tell-tale is that I never hear people who are into technical analysis talk about their total return, after taxes and commissions. Instead, I always hear them talk about the stocks they made money on. I happen to be privy to my father's portfolio, and using technical analysis, churning his portfolio, paying taxes, he has made 8.3% a year over the last 10 years. And he more or less does this full time since his retirement.

    In the same period, I've averaged 17% APR, even allowing for the .com dive. My dad makes a killing on a few stocks, but in the long run he loses because of the stocks that he makes a little bit on, but not enough to cover his brokerage fees.

    My advice is this: pick a few companies whose product you believe in. Figure out what their historical P/E is. Compensate for the fact that P/E's are going up nowadays (I usually allow 20:1 where traditional value is 14.5:1.) Then estimate -- and here's the art of it -- where their earnings are going in 3 years. If the P/E based on future earnings is less than your target P/E, buy.

    Then, /ignore/ "the market". I mean it. Look at your portfolio once a month, and whatever you do don't watch CNNFN or pay attention to analysts whose main interest is to get you to churn your portfolio. Buy and hold, and pay attention only to your companies' BUSINESS, not the market.

    Maybe some of you can make TA work for you. If so, more power to you. But my money's on buy-n-hold. TA isn't investing, it's trading and gambling. Doing research for more effective TA doesn't make it not random any more than reading the sports pages makes betting on sports not random. And you don't really need any software to do it, although Quicken might be nice. As far as a book, I'd recommend "Stocks for the Long Run" by Spiegel. He goes into a lot more detail than the Lynch's of the world. Also, get yourself a good book on reading balance sheets. You'll need it.

    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  14. Horse races by HermanAB · · Score: 1
    are probably better to bet on than stocks.

    Does anyone have info on horse race analysis and where to get the data?

    --
    Oh well, what the hell...
    1. Re:Horse races by skaffen42 · · Score: 1

      With a sig like "Ja well no fine" there is only one country in the world you can be from... which is amusing as I actually knew an actuary from there who spent a lot of time looking for ways to make money from playing the horses.

      I think he had some success, but not enough to make it all worth it.

      --
      People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
    2. Re:Horse races by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does anyone have info on horse race analysis and where to get the data?

      See Peter Asch and Richard E. Quandt, Racetrack Betting. The authors are economists at Rutgers and Princeton, respectively, and apply to the track the same kind of analysis they would apply to the market.

  15. Re:Technical Analysis? Why not buy lottery tickets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i don't want to be too rude, but..

    technical analysis is more for intraday trading, i'm not sure what your father is trying to accomplish with what sounds like long-run technical investment.
    commissions at $.005/share can be had relatively easily, and .5-1% gains per day are pretty common for good technical pattern traders (this is after commissions and before taxes).
    i know several of them.

    unrelated:
    here's a relatively simple scheme for making long-term investments that may interest a few people:
    http://www.dogsofthedow.com

  16. Re:Technical Analysis? Why not buy lottery tickets by chiyoonline · · Score: 1

    It seems important to note that holding "THE MARKET" portfolio is great for folks that 1) adhere to the efficient market hypothesis, and 2) don't put a price premium on certain investments due to some feature of their available portfolio of investments. However, some firms may be in a position to reduce risk within their company by purchasing specific securities or options. Even though you may be an efficient market believer, some companies do benefit from specific investments to hedge risk. If the software developed was flexible enough to accept inputed data, say the returns on an internal project, it could be very useful for back testing of risk reducing investments. Just an example of why this software could be important even if you do believe in efficient markets - which is the basic description for some many of these comments arguing against a technical analysis approach to investing.

  17. Do-It-Yourself Financial Trading projects by chemise · · Score: 1

    Check http://www.ta-lib.org/hdr_lnk.html Most commercial software forces the user into limited testing capability. Often they choose a model that gravitates around the charting/visual features. I took a different approach where the design has no GUI. I did put my energy into building a good back testing (walk-forward) engine with my own optimizer and money management. I found TA-Lib useful for providing efficient technical analysis functions and data access. It's not an application by itself, but a good starting point for almost any type of TA apps.

  18. Quantum leap - probably yes... by HermanAB · · Score: 1
    Ja boet, but till the fraud in the stock market eases off a bit and goes down to more 'normal' levels - whatever that is - one is stuck buying blue chip with low returns, or betting on horses.

    I am actually more invested in real estate than stocks at this stage.

    Another option is to play Lotto 649 - the odds are terrible, but you can't win if you don't play...

    BTW, I'm in Canada now. Been around a bit.

    --
    Oh well, what the hell...
    1. Re:Quantum leap - probably yes... by skaffen42 · · Score: 1

      You know what they say, the lottery is a tax on people who can't do math. :)

      Real estate is probably a good bet, but with Mr. Greenspan about to start raising the rates that little party is probably at an end as well. Figures, I am planning to buy a place in the next few months. With my luck that can only mean the real estate market is in for a big dive.

      Actually know a couple of Afrikaners up in Toronto. Which part of that snow covered wasteland up North have you made it to?

      --
      People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
  19. Re:Technical Analysis? Why not buy lottery tickets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't want to be rude either, but your statement:

    > technical analysis is more for intraday trading

    is equivalent to saying "I really don't know what I'm talking about"...

    For the record,
    - I use technical analysis almost exclusively
    - I trade futures, not stocks
    - I don't day trade; I look for trades that will ideally run for weeks at a time
    - I've made more money trading an (initially) $20k account than I have out of working as an IT consultant for each of the last 3 years (note: I'm defining a "year" as a tax year, in this context). Aside from a 5 month break last year, I've worked more or less full time in IT for those 3 years. Furthermore, I purposely drain the account down to $20k each time it's gone above $100k

    There's any number of people who trade successfully in this manner; I've met several dozen at various seminars, although I've always traded either from home or from a pager when I'm at work.

    I know of people who claim to daytrade stocks, but no-one that's done it successfully for any length of time. As far as I'm concerned, that's a fair indication that it's extraordinarily difficult to do well.

    Finally, when trading I look for gains considerably above your figures of 0.5-1% per day. When I can't get those returns with a high degree of confidence, I don't trade.

  20. Re:Technical Analysis? Why not buy lottery tickets by Fished · · Score: 1
    I'm not advocating "THE MARKET" portfolio - although it's better than day trading. I'm advocating that individual investors look at the businesses of individual companies and make informed buying decisions comparing those business fundamentals to current market prices. My assumption is that the market is /inefficient/, and that there are companies out there which are undervalued and companies which are overvalued. By buying the undervalued companies, I can do well.

    Technical analysis, on the other hand, depends utterly on the assumption that the market is basically efficient, and that there are no true "values" in a general sense.

    Now, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. To my way of thinking, at this time most of the market is inflated (not efficient). This means that you might have some short term luck with TA as you mess around with price fluctuations on already inflated stocks. On the other hand, there are some bargains out there, and also some tech companies that may grow a great deal over the next few years.

    But, at the end of the day, 80% of mutual funds, the great bastions of TA, underperform the market. Sorry, I don't buy it.

    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  21. Re:Technical Analysis? Why not buy lottery tickets by Fished · · Score: 1

    Just out of curiosity, what books/methods would you recommend? I'm certainly open to being proven wrong, but thus far haven't seen anything but buy and hold investing that offered a conistent return. Can you describe your anualized return?

    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  22. Qtstalker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    This is an OSS project hosted on sourceforge: http://qtstalker.sourceforge.net.

    From the SF description: "Stock market, commodity and technical analysis charting app based on the Qt toolkit. Extendible plugin system for quotes and indicators. Portfolio, back testing, chart objects and many more features included."

    1. Re:Qtstalker by garglblaster · · Score: 1
      Glad I stumbled upon this thread..

      I've just been trying out qtstalker for a few weeks now and I must say I'm quite impressed.

      Although its look-and-feel as well as the functionality are still a bit betaish, it is already useable!
      ..I already did some nice trades based on analysis done with qtstalker..

      However you might need a bit of experience in (the backgrounds of) technical analysis in order to use it properly..

      It has a number of nice features:
      - download of free (end-of-day) quotes data from yahoo etc.
      - modular structure, plugins, written in c++
      - open source

      Conclusion: this is a nice program, it's really worth a try. I think qtstalker and geniustrader are the best open-source programs around at his time!

      --

      perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'

  23. Re:Technical Analysis? Why not buy lottery tickets by xsbellx · · Score: 1

    Finally, when trading I look for gains considerably above your figures of 0.5-1% per day. When I can't get those returns with a high degree of confidence, I don't trade.

    I must offer my congratulations! $20,000 earning 0.5% per day will have a future value of $123,493.06 at the end of one year. On the other hand, the same $20,000 earning 1% per day will result in $755,668.69. So assuming "considerably above" is around 2% to 2.5% per day, you would have an annual income between $27,548,165.84 and $164,149,991.15 (less the original 20K).

    U DA MAN!

    --
    If VISTA is the answer, you didn't understand the question
  24. Re:Technical Analysis? Why not buy lottery tickets by chiyoonline · · Score: 1

    I certainly agree with the tenets of value investing. I'd have to say this describes my personal investing philosophy better than anything. However, in order to hedge specific risks a company may face due to investments that are required by their business model, it may be advantageous to gain exposure to securities which are not, objectively speaking, undervalued. I'm just saying that capital markets are useful for things other than value investing, and the software described at the outset could be useful in many circumstances, regardless of what investment goals you have in mind. This, of course, depends on how much flexibility there is on the data input side.

  25. No.... by Fished · · Score: 1
    No, U DA MAN!

    Man, I love it when people use math. :) Until proven otherwise, let's just agree that this guy is perhaps mistaken about his overall returns. Or perhaps there just aren't very many opportunities where he can apply his winning strategy. Either way, have to wonder why he doesn't just leave his money in for a year or 10 then buy australia.

    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  26. collective2.com by towatatalko · · Score: 1

    collective2.com is a website where you can set up your own trading system for free and compete with other traders by making trades in real-time. Your system is rated by % of return. You can have more than one system, either futures, equity options, currencies, commodities, or just stocks. Now, what's interesting there is that you can sell your services by subscription. It is great learning tools and potential to make some money if your system is a successful one.

    --

    IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
  27. www.QTExtender.com ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out QTExtender QTExtender. Excellent decision support product for financial decisions.

  28. FURTHER INFORMATION by Stile+65 · · Score: 1

    I really do not recommend Prophet's historical options data. I just arranged for a refund, for the following reasons:

    -There is no way to tell which stocks the majority of the option roots are for. This is particularly irritating, because if you can't match them, they're useless.

    -Quite a few of the files are misnumbered when it comes to the year (possibly more, but I didn't look that closely once I got to the problems that it was already having). That's more trouble to figure out how to relabel thousands if not millions of files.

    -The data's not very clean. They basically take what the CBOE reports and pass it on to the customer. There are missed decimal points, missed dates, seemingly incorrect volumes and open interest totals, etc. I didn't investigate it very far once I saw some of the errors.

    -They will not go back and try to fix historical data. I asked the tech support people, and they said that once a mistake makes it into historical data, it stays there and they won't try to fix it.

    In short, I definitely don't recommend their historical options data. I have also had experience with their charting app (through my broker, thinkorswim, which uses Prophet's Java charting application in its trading software) and am quite satisfied with that. They seem to be a good company, but historical options data is not their strong point.

    --
    I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!