If you are a system based trader it is imperative that you track you system(s) performance right? Think about it, how do you know how well a given system is performing?
Do you try and track key performance metrics in Excel? Good luck with that. Do you use Quicken which is an excellent overall financial management program but is really lacking in the trading area?
Do you have a clue what your profit factor is? How about your drawdowns? If you can’t answer those questions you need to get a good trade management software package to help you better manage your trading business.
The problem is that of the few decent portfolio management programs on the market they mostly focus on trading account management and their reports are more account based than system based.
That’s fine if you are a discretionary trader or only trade one system but for those of us that trade multiple systems and accounts we need trade management software that allows for a more detailed view of our trading activities.
The only trading tool that I have found that will track multiple trading systems is Stator and I have used it for years now and have never had a problem with it. In fact, I just upgraded to the newest version and reports that would literally take 10 or more minutes are now generated in seconds.
With Stator you can track multiple accounts AND multiple trading systems by simply assigning a system to a trade when it is entered.
By doing that one simple step you can generate performance reports with just about every trading metric there is and really get an idea how your trading systems are doing.
For instance, you might have daytrading systems A and B and swing trading systems C and D defined in Stator. You can report on all systems combined, each system individually or you can set up two groups that shows you all daytrading or swing trading systems combined.
This is an extremely powerful reporting feature that showed me that even though one system I was trading was somewhat profitable my other systems were doing much better from a profit factor standpoint so I stopped trading that system and put my trading capital in the other more profitable systems.
If you are a system trader you really need to take a hard look at Stator and what it can do for your trading. The website has a demo available for download as well as some nice trading articles and the owner is a really nice guy.
If anyone knows of a better trade management package leave a comment and I will check it out.
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Maybe its worth to have a look at the Trading Simulator, a new free online trading
tool.
The URL is:
http://www.numericalexample.com/content/view/86/27/
Users can enter almost any number of transactions, dividends, an initial
cash balance, interest rates, costs and dividends.
The Trading Simulator computes the value of your portfolio, the costs, the interest received or paid and the ROI.
In addition the Trading Simulator produces two time graphs. The top graph shows the value of the portfolio, the cash part and the investments. The
second graph shows the value of each (risk) category of your investments.
Nice but I will stick with Stator
Mike