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Registered User
Joined: 3/16/2005
Posts: 26
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Dumb question. Can this be done? If I run a strategy scan tonight to look for signals to enter at tomorrow's open, how does Blocks indicate this. It sticks True with an arrow on the bar to enter. Since tomorrow's trading day hasn't started, how do I get the signal tonight? Am I missing something here?
Thanks,
Michael
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Registered User
Joined: 4/18/2005
Posts: 4,090
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I'm not certain what you are asking. but yes if you can define clearly what you are looking for in an entry signal then you'll get the little flag over the curent days candle. Then you'r orders would go in the following morning.
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Administration
Joined: 9/18/2004
Posts: 3,522
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In scan only mode, the arrow would be on the day the signal occurred. If you were running it in the evening and the signal triggered that day, then a true marker would appear on the last bar of the chart. Also, your Results tab will show you stocks that are currently passing your scan.
Ken Gilb (Kuf)
Chief Software Engineer - Worden Brothers Inc.
Try/Catch - My RealCode Blog
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Registered User
Joined: 3/16/2005
Posts: 26
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Thanks for the clarification. Michael Thompson indicated in his presentation in Denver last Saturday that the back-testing of strategies only issued entries and exits on the open of the bar after the signal fired. If you run the full strategy mode (not scan-only) you can see that the indication about where the trade starts and ends is the bar after the signal, both on the entry and the exit. I am still evaluating Blocks for a daily scanning system and wasn't sure how it would report its live signals.
One suggestion I have to make it a bit more versatile a back-tester is to allow specification of entering or exiting on the close of the bar that gives the signal. You can argue that the bar needs to fully close to know what the signal should be, but in the real world, I'm fine with the price 5 minutes before the close being used as a proxy for the closing price to allow me to make my trading decisions. Many times the edge is acting at the close and not waiting until next morning's open.
I'm also hoping that you will add the ability to specify slippage and commissions so that back testing can show real-world trading costs. Many times these are the difference between a losing and winning system.
And finally, while I'm rambling, it would be really really nice to be able to specify a batch of strategy tests to be performed. Load the queue, let it crunch overnight while you sleep, and wake up in the morning with a whole bunch of results all at once. Is this feature part of your plans?
Thanks,
Michael
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Registered User
Joined: 3/16/2005
Posts: 26
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Kuf:
I'm not finding that it works the way you are saying. For instance, I just ran a scan-only strategy on the Nasdaq 100 for a very simple strategy: List all the stocks that had a close today above yesterday's close and also closed above today's open. The results show 9 stocks:
AAPL
AMLN
APOL
BMET
CELG
NVDA
ISRG
GENZ
EXPE
Flipping through the charts, this appears to be an accurate list for today. However, on none of these charts is there a True arrow for today. Also, for previous days, I obviously get a lot of true and false arrows, but they don't always make sense or jibe with what happened on that day. For instance, I get a lot of past days with both a true and a false arrow. How can it be both? I also get a lot of days where there is no arrow and there should be a true. In fact, if I look closely, I can see that none of the last 3 trading days on any of these charts have any arrows, and there are several that should be true. That is what has led me to wonder if I'm getting appropriate trading signals the night before for the next trading day's open. Can you explain what is happening?
Thanks,
Michael
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