I have been trading for about a year. Yes, an actual live account. I am by no means an expert in any sense of the word or meaning. I have been utilizing a volatility breakout type trend-following system for my trading and part of this process has forced me (by my own design) to manually backtest the system as well as others that i have looked at but not really traded. It is a cumbersome process and I do know why they created computers in the first place - to make lives easier, i guess. Or maybe more complicated.
The manual backtesting has been very useful for me to understand and respect price action. I have come across several interesting ideas, patterns, etc while doing this that has taken me down other paths. All of which, I believe, has enhanced my understanding of trading.
However, it is laborious and I think I have punsihed myself long enough to take the next step and backtest a system to determine its robustness across many markets and many pairs. I know this is a forex blog but I am looking at adapting my system (at the very least testing it) across commodities and equities.
I have searched on this forum for posts that might be helpful and although I have not gone through all million + posts that exist I did go through many threads to try and find insights into my question.
I have read the reviews of many but i would like to hear from some traders what they use, like or don’t like.
I have looked at Tradestation (shockingly - yes that is sarcasm), WealthLab, TradingBlox, Trading Recipes, etc.
I know its a broad question and subject to personal preferences but if anyone has any ideas to point me in a direction fo more information, etc., I would be grateful.
Of course, cost is a concern. I do not like to waste money where I would rather compound it.
Check out Forex Tester, it is the only forex backtesting software that I use. What I like is that they also have free historical data. I use it on my Mac with VMWare Fusion and Windows XP. It has really helped me develop systems that work. I have tested a couple systems that I thought would be completely ridiculous, but actually turned out to be viable. The initial software was buggy, but they have really improved it over the last couple versions. Since 2.0, you can actually have two different pairs up at the same time and you can test correlations between the two. The setup is similar to MT4, so if you are familiar with how that works, Forex Tester should be pretty easy. The only thing you have to get used to is the importing of the data.
I love your ideas, as I’ve gone through a similar path. What I ended up doing was to code my TF system in Excel. It took me a while to learn how to do this, but it was worth every minute of my time as it saved me quite a bit of money and I gained a deeper understanding of how systems work. Check out some of my results on my thread 301 Moved Permanently
That said, I know this way is not for everyone. I’ve looked at Trading Recipes and TradingBlox and like them both. If you have money to spare, I don’t think you could go wrong with either.