I really love what your trying to do here.. I love the concept; however I think you have a long way to go to make it a product that would be worth singing about. Tick data for hard-core back testing is a problem, and I think your product is currently the best around however given the bar is so low this isn’t a great achievement yet…
A bit about me, I am a communications engineer and I work in software development, I am also a trader and I have developed a number of tools of my own, I am frustrated by the huge gaps that are still in the market around back testing, tick data is one part but to have a really good standalone back tester in my view is really required.
There are a few developers close but they aren’t there yet. So anyway, in the case of tick story I think your heading the right direction but I want to make some suggestions so you can continue to build the best product around and hopefully you can make some money from it (if this is really great you should charge for it).
So here are some suggestions that I think would make your product something I would pay money for.
I know you have said that you are planning to have the database updated “live” and in real time. But honestly I think this is not required and would introduce more problems than you would like to solve.
The main issue is you have no control over the speed that the data is going to be able to be downloaded, because Internet speeds vary from site to site. Having real-time will in some cases be impossible.
So you need to have an alternative. What I am suggesting below will achieve this and will also enable “real time” of sorts should the user desire it.
I would therefore like to suggest that you modify the architecture of your product to do the following.
1. Start up as a windows service and download/export based on a configuration file. The service would be running all the time and would just do what it’s told in the configuration file. There should be a notification icon in the notification area and from that icon you should be able to quick load different configurations or open the configuration editor for the current configuration that is loaded
2. Modify the current GUI to create an XML configuration file that is used by the service that, way you could setup your desired workflow (download these pairs over this period and export these pairs between these dates) you could still use the pre defines (quick button) to determine the period you want to download but you could add one which is “To Today” which will always download the data for the pairs you have selected up to today. When tomorrow becomes today then the service should automatically download the latest data (this would need to be synchronised to the Data source clock). You should be able to save the configuration in different versions that can be opened by the service and you should also have a “publish” button which will load it to the service and restart it.
3. Have the ability to run the application in Command line mode, you could still use the XML file creator/editor to configure the command line parameters but having a CLI would mean if a user wanted to, they could schedule the download for a specific time of day (if they have a data provider that gives them high bandwidth at night for instance). Some users may have a specific need to schedule the export of their data or download a specific pair at market close this CLI in conjunction with the existing Windows scheduler would achieve this.
4. Ability to limit the resources (ie Download speed) for the application, I have noticed that at the moment if you try to get ambitious with your downloads, the PC will slow down and in some cases crash. The same issues happens when you are using other pier to pier applications (such as bit torrent downloaders), the solution to this would be to have the ability to limit the number of download threads that you are running and queue the rest. You could also have a limit to the download speed as well. The only catch with this approach is that you may get a race condition if you have the “To Today” parameter set as there is the potential for the user to throttle the downloads too far and the application will constantly be trying to catch up to today. However this could be worked around by either preventing the “To Today” function if the speed is below a certain threshold or disabling speeds below a certain level if the “To Today” function is used.
5. A back tester that works constantly…this should enable you to import a number of different formats (Mt4, MT5,Ninga trader ect) and run a back test and walk forward analysis with Out of Sample data comparison, an added feature to this which is presently missing from the market completely is a portfolio tester. This would need to be able to back test several strategies at the same time on a variety of pairs, this is well beyond the scope of your product but it is needed. One of your competitors is currently working on this and I know they will charge for it.
I honestly think this would put you head and shoulders above what you are now. If you’re too busy to develop this further, would you consider working out some kind of agreement to enable me to pick up development?
I have been using this product for over a year and there hasn’t been much improvement in that time which tells me you might have a bit going on. I think your product has really strong potential, If there is any way I can help I would be willing to get involved.
Very warm regards
Tony Fitzsimmons