Thank you for your reply Bruce.  From reading your attached URLs, it looks like I can accomplish my goal.

Below are the specifics of what I need to accomplish:

I would like to do a 5 year backtest on an equity trading system.  Every month, I have a set (from as few as 0, to as many as 10) of stock tickers, and these tickers can vary every month.  During the backtest, once the backtest reaches the first of the month, an entry indicator is applied to the symbols for that month.  If there is an entry, then an exit indicator is applied to the current position.  Time is not an exit criterion, so this position may be held into the following month, even if its ticker is not part of that new month’s list of tickers.

I have a csv formatted set of my past monthly tickers, basically a std::vector <std::vector> which is 60 x 10.  If appropriate, I can write a ruby script to quickly generate the necessary if / else if statements, using date as the conditional and then load the correct tickers for that timeframe.

Do you have code, or pseudo code, suggestions?

Many thanks,

Evan

Every month, I have a new set of tickers which form my watchlist.  I would like to programmatically select a set of tickers depending on the date which is being evaluated.

In Wealth-Lab, I would use a switch and just hardcode the appropriate tickers for a particular date range.

Is there a method I can employ in StockFinder which will give me similar results?