Archive for May, 2007
Posted by Jay at 8:40 am
If you are designing a trading system, it is crucial that you adequately test your ideas. Now, backtesting trading systems is fraught with danger. Curve fitting, systems that can’t actually be traded in real life, ignoring frictional costs, you name it, I’ve done it. But that is another topic for another post. Even though there are problems to be avoided, you’ll still need to backtest.
Platforms to backtest come in many shapes and sizes, but most of them have a common characteristic: they are insanely expensive. In spite of the cost, most have huge gaps in their capabilities. In particular, many are deficient at the portfolio level and instead assume you are trading a few specific equities rather than screening the broader market day by day.
Amibroker overcomes all these issues for the technical trader (not so much for the fundamental trader). It is both feature rich and affordable. I have spent quite literally thousands of hours developing my trading style and specific system, and most of that time was logged on Amibroker. If you want to focus on individual charts, it is feature rich. If you want to do portfolio testing, it is feature rich. I have encountered very few goods or services in my life of any sort that were such a remarkable value.
Now, I will hasten to add that Amibroker does have some flaws. However, the rich scripting language (AFL) has allowed me to overcome pretty much all the problems I’ve encountered in the generic features. For instance, I’m not a fan of the default stops (loss, profit, time, etc.), but have implemented my own using AFL. You can even turn off the default backtester itself and programmatically control the individual buy/sell decisions. Thus, I was able to create a system that includes both shorts and longs with separate max open positions for each. So the flaws, though real, tend to be surmountable and do not detract from the value of Amibroker.
Posted by Jay at 8:37 am
When you set a toilet in place, if it has a bit of a rock to it, no amount of tightening the bolts will stabilize it.
First, make sure it really is in place and you’ve mashed down the wax ring so that the toilet is fully on the floor. If it continues to rock, you probably have tile that is a bit uneven or some other anomaly with your floor. Here’s what you do. Go raid your kid’s piggy bank and get some pennies. Use the pennies as shims around the edge of the toilet to stabilize it, making sure the weight is distributed across several pennies.
When you caulk around the bottom of the toilet at the end of the job, it will both hide the pennies and ensure they stay in place. Assuming you use white caulk instead of clear. Which you should, for this very reason.
Posted by Jay at 8:17 am
And in the hearing of all the people he said to his disciples, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
Luke 20:45-47 [+/-]ERROR: You have exceeded your quota of 500 requests per day.
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Last week we received our house tax appraisal for 2007. The value of our home had been raised well above what we recently paid for it. Perhaps some folks would find it gratifying to know that the state government agrees with their assessment of the potential value of the house. I found it extremely frustrating that my annual “rent” payment to the government (you know, the money I pay Texas so it grants me permission to continue dwelling in my home for another year) was going up so much.
A couple days later I headed downtown to protest the appraisal. Given that we had just bought the house and I had all the paperwork with me, it proved quite straight forward to get the appraisal lowered to the amount we had paid for the house.
While I was sitting in the cubicle talking to the appraiser, I overheard a portion of a conversation in the cubicle next to me. From what I heard, I surmised the woman was 1) quite elderly; 2) likely a widow; and 3) living on social security. And she was basically saying that the new appraisal on her home might force her out of it. And the response from the scribe appraiser was, so sorry, but we don’t make the rules.
How have we come to this, where injustice is such a part of our lives that we have institutionalized the devouring of widow’s homes?
Posted by Jay at 2:07 pm
Don’t skimp on plumber’s putty. It’s just not worth it. Sure, as you tighten things down, a bunch will squeeze out that you’ll have to clean up. But that’s 10 seconds of work. Reinstalling everything 4 months after you originally installed it is much more irritating.
Posted by Jay at 11:57 am
One of the many tools I rely on as a trader is Stockfetcher, which I’ve used on a daily basis for several years now. It is a wonderful stock screener, the likes of which I’ve not found elsewhere though there are many other screeners available (many of which are free).
I use Stockfetcher to: 1) execute my system on a daily basis; 2) explore the universe of stocks and chart patterns for new ideas; 3) provide initial testing on those new ideas.
The scripts used to screen for stocks are fairly easy to learn and are remarkably powerful. The only deficiency in the scripting logic is the lack of an OR statement (this is by design intent according to the site owners), and even this small drawback is easily overcome with a clever use of the COUNT command.
At $9 a month, I’m not aware of a better value for those wanting to implement a mechanical trading system that uses EOD data (End of Day… in other words, the day’s Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume).
And now a bit of explanation for those wondering what a stock screener (or scanner as they are sometimes called) is or does. Simply put, a stock screener evaluates data from the universe of stocks (around 8000 of them on the major markets) and spits out a list of stocks that meet specified criteria at that moment. Additionally, it might provide data about the list of stocks produced. In the case of Stockfetcher, that data can be user defined.
Thus, to run my system, I use Stockfetcher to run 8 different screens each night and return a list of stocks for each screen with an associated score that I use to sort the stocks picked from the different screens. I then take the top 6 that were picked by my 4 long screens and the top 9 that were picked by my 4 short screens. But the whole ranking and picking moves us to another tool for another entry.
Posted by Jay at 2:45 pm
Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.
Proverbs 14:4 [+/-]ERROR: You have exceeded your quota of 500 requests per day.
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I find this verse very encouraging as a parent. So much is said about the blessings of children in the Bible, yet being a parent sometimes feels overwhelming. Tricia “sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks” (Proverbs 31:17 [+/-]ERROR: You have exceeded your quota of 500 requests per day.
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), yet it is difficult to keep up with a full household day in and day out.
But God wants us to know that wisdom counts the cost, and that messiness is in some cases the cost of abundance! Not metaphorical messiness… real messiness.
Notice the proverb assumes we value cleanliness, and does not directly challenge that value. Messiness isn’t wise in and of itself. In fact, I believe it could easily be argued that in many cases messiness is unwise because it makes the household harder to run.
But assuming that you value neatness and organization in your home, this proverb challenges us to count the cost and realize that neatness is not a virtue above all others, and must be set aside at times. So I encourage all the homemakers reading this to take heart and be of good cheer. Cleanliness is not, in and of itself, next to Godliness.
Posted by Jay at 1:30 pm
A few nights ago we were praying together as a family and we had a short time of thanksgiving. Now, right before the prayer time, Abigail had trimmed her nails by herself for the very first time. Her prayer of thanksgiving went something like this (updated and revised with Tricia’s help):
“Dear God, thank you for helping me to trim my nails all by myself, because I know you put your Spirit in me to help me do it.”
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