System Tester 

 The System Tester combines the power of the Scanning Manager and Trade Tracker into one module that will provide a fast and simple method for evaluating your trading plans.

Tip

It is important to understand that the Market Analyst System Tester is in no way a black box system, and will not give you buy or sell signals.  It is a module designed to aid you in testing your trading strategy in a simulated environment.  Past performance does not guarantee future profits. 

To start a new System Test, click on the New menu and left click the System Test option.

 

The Data File selector window will display.  Enter the code for the security you want to run a system test on and press Enter.

  

The System Tester window will open.

Creating a New System Test

To create a new System Test click on the New button.

 

 

The System Test Wizard will display.

In the first window enter a Name for the new System Test.

Once a name has been entered, adjust the Type as required. The 3 options available are Long, Short and Both.

Select the price the Entry / Exit trades use.  (Day of Signal (Close) or Day After Signal (Open)).

Enter the amount of starting capital the System Test can use in the Amount Invested section.  If you wish to re-invest the profits made by previous trades into future trades, tick the ReInvest Profits checkbox.

The system test will not perform correctly if the “Amount Invested” is not set to a real world value.  Leaving this value as 1 will generally mean no results are displayed at the end of a System Test.

If you want to close any open trades at the end of the system test, ensure the Close all positions after last day checkbox is ticked.

If you are using the System Tester for Futures or Foreign Exchange charts, there are 3 additional options you can set up.  They are Price per Contract, Price Per Point and Point Movement.

In the second window that opens you will need to enter your Entry and Exit Criteria.

To do this, left click on the Add button located in the Entry Scans section.

In the window displayed locate the required criteria.  Left click it to highlight the criteria you wish to add and, click the Select button to add it to the list.

The Properties for the selected criteria will be displayed on the right hand side of the window.

Adjust the Properties as required.

Once you have entered all your entry criteria, repeat the above steps to add your exit criteria.

Once you have completed both the entry and exit criteria sections, click Next to continue.

You will then be taken to the Run System Test window.

If you want to run the System Test straight away, leave the checkbox ticked and click the Finish button.

The system test will run.  Once completed the results will be displayed on the right hand side window.

The Summary window will display the same details as the Trade Tracker report (Number of Trades, Total Profit, etc).

To view a breakdown of each trade, click on the Detail page tab at the top of the report window.

Each trade is colour coded to indicate the result of the trade.  White is used for all entries, blue for profitable exits and red for exits that produced a loss.

From this window you can Export the report to a CSV file for use in 3^rd party programs such as Notepad or MS Excel.  The export button is located on the top left corner of the report window.

You can also plot each trade directly to the chart for  more detailed analysis.  To do this left click the Chart Trades button located just above the Detail page tab.  The trades will be plotted to the chart using the Trade Tracker arrows.

Running a previously saved System Test

To run a previously saved System Test, left click the test you want to run (will highlight in blue) and click the Run button.

Deleting a previously saved System Test

To delete a previously saved System Test, left click the test you want to delete (will highlight in blue) and click the Delete button.  When asked to confirm the action, click Yes.

Editing a previously saved System Test 

To edit a previously saved System Test, left click the test you want to edit (will highlight in blue) and click the Edit button.  Make the desired adjustments and click Finish to save the changes.