My trial period for this software is now over. So what did I think of this program? Like any software out there it has its strong points as well as its weak ones. First of all the program is huge. There are way too many features to be able to test out thoroughly in 14 days. That was a disappointment, it would be nice if they gave you 30 days, but it is what it is.
When it comes to Elliott Waves, the program works……… Well, ok. All the rules are adhered to, but when you get to the scanning features like the “Automatic Elliott Wave”, the places where the program puts its labels and the locations where I would place them are sometimes at odds. The Gartley scans, however seem to be spot on. I really didn’t have time to test this as thoroughly as I would like, but what I did see didn’t look too bad. The one quirk that I found with the program, however is that when you used the replay feature along with the “Automatic Gartleys”, MotiveWave would tend to erase the patterns and repaint the chart. Sometimes that would happen in just a couple of bars. Someone else should test that out more thoroughly.
One thing that I would like to mention is that throughout the testing, I seemed to call the company on a continual basis, and every time they were always very helpful and patient with my questions.
[B][U]Pros[/U][/B]
I mentioned before that the program is written in java, but much to my surprise I saw no real slowdowns, even when I loaded all kinds of indicators on the charts. The feature that I really came to like was the replay feature on the charts. Unlike the strategy tester on MT4, replay allows you to rewind the charts several years back if you want and then you can trade your strategies “forward” along with a simulated [not the broker’s demo] account to see how you do. The real value of that is that I believe it will definitely shorten the learning curve of any trading system you are testing.
MotiveWave is also very configurable. If for some reason you would like to look at a 37 minute candle chart for example, no problem. You can create charts of any timeframe you desire. They call their indicators “studies”, and there were more of those studies than I had time to look at.
The feature I want to be sure to mention is your ability to overlay one chart on top of another. How would this be useful? Let’s say that you are watching the crude prices and was curious on how it would affect the CAD/JPY. What you could do is to open up a CAD/JPY chart and overlay a line chart of the current crude markets to visually see the correlations.
[B][U]Cons[/U][/B]
Now here are a few things I discovered that I did not like. First, there is no ability to remap your shortcuts. That becomes a problem because when you put your Elliott Waves on the chart, both the promotion/demotion of the wave degrees and the increase/decrease of the font size are mapped to [B]Ctrl+Plus[/B] and [B]Ctrl+Minus [/B]respectively. That turned out to be a real pain because I like keyboard shortcuts and you wouldn’t know which of the actions are being controlled at the time. I spoke with the company and the person I was dealing with agreed that some of the shortcuts are acting quirky and he was going to have a word with the developers.
One other thing that drove me nuts, was the trading aspect of the program. As I have mentioned before, MT4 accounts will NOT work with this software. If you use FXCM you must obtain a separate demo account that works with their Trading Station to be able to trade through MotiveWave. I learned very fast is that while you can place trades, it most definitely is not as intuitive as MT4. Trading in MotiveWave is highly configurable and that in itself, I believe is the problem. The internal “simulated accounts” can help with getting used to the process.
[B][U]Conclusion[/U][/B]
If any of you would like to test this program out, my advice would be to read the user manual and watch the training videos FIRST. That way when you start your trial, you won’t waste time like I did and you will know more of what to expect. They will only allow one 14 day trial per year. Every Wednesday, MotiveWave does sponsor a webinar on different aspects of using the software. The webinars will last about 30-40 minutes each.
If anyone else decides to test this software out, I would be interested in what you think of this as well.