Barry-TradeLogAnalytics

Lost Trader, Hi - The reply was from Barry - The UTA Developer that programmed the Trade Log for the Netpicks system users. Please send an email to tradeloganalysis@gmail.com. I will be happy to collaborate with you and modify the trade log to accommodate the necessary data and develop the excursion analysis for you. Troy and I appreciate your interest and use of the tool. Hopefully, we can continue to improve it and make it even more useful for traders that use manual back-testing. I look forward to working with you. Thanks - Barry Trade Log Analytics

Lost and Urma Blume MAE, MFE require more price information than is collected in the manual trade posting of UTA. They require high and low prices while the trade is open - and on each bar to plot it out correctly and make it useful for analysis in helping tighten or loosen stops, amongst other things. UTA does not analyze this. You are correct in that many trading platforms provide this information on a trading system that a user programs into the trading platform. But what if you are a trader that does not, or chooses not to use a programmed trading system? Then you do not have access to this information. And this is where the UTA is helpful. Many of the traders that attempt to program trading systems are wasting their time taking pot shots in the dark with a myriad of useless and worn out trading indicators. They spend endless hours testing ill-conceived concepts that defy logic - looking for the perfect system - the Holy Grail of trading. Without fail, they will do no better than the randomness that the market provides over any length of time. In other words - they fail to develop anything useful and waste a lot of time surfing trade sites and discrediting other peoples hard earned success. Until the trader is prepared to study and learn from their individual trades - and not just test random indicator based "systems" - they will not really understand how to improve their trading. This concept is born out by the success that many Netpicks traders have with their manual back-testing of trades. And the UTA is just one tool designed to help them improve their trading. They choose to learn and trade this way. I wish you luck with your ongoing search for the Holy Grail. Please respect our desire to use this forum constructively and find someone else's parade to rain on. Trade Log Analytics

UrmaBlume Hi, The quick answer is: yes, there is a way to copy your trades into UTA. If you have a trade platform that can dump out selected information from your trades into a text or csv file, then that file can be opened in Excel and the trade information copied/pasted into the UTA. There are eleven pieces of information that UTA uses: Date (needed - mm/dd/yy), Session (needed - morning, afternoon, other, end of day totaling, end of week totaling) Filter A (not needed - some type of indicator or method) Time (needed - hhmm in 24 hour military time) LongBuy Price LongSell Price ShortOpen Price ShortClose Price Setup Type (needed for analysis of setup types if there are more than one) Exit Type (not needed) Filter B (not needed - some type of indicator or method) Also: The last trade of the day has a blank row after it for totaling the day The last trade of the week has a blank row after it for totaling the week along with the Session label of "Week" The last trade of the month has a blank row after it for totaling the month along with the Session label of "Month" So either program trade platform to write the trades in this format or do it manually in excel, then put them into the log. I am working on a read utility to read trades from another spreadsheet - identifying the specific column where the information is located. The utility will then cycle through the trade rows and add them to the UTA with the correct end of day/week/month labels. With regards to your comments about the analysis that most trade platforms perform - UTA does not provide all of this information - most of it is pretty useless. UTA does let you analyze the group or a definable group of the trades and see a breakout analysis of return and equity curves for time of day, day of week, trade type, session type, and performance metrics. Most trade platforms cannot do this without programming. This is very powerful for finding the best times to trade and minimizing your trade time. It also lets you see some interesting trade histograms (distributions) to help you understand the personality of your trade system. There is also a money management feature that lets you apply risk and money management rules and then see how the set (or subset) of trades would have ended up. This also lets you study how consecutive losing episodes and draw- down episodes would have affected the equity curve. UTA is not for everyone. It takes some effort by the trader to actually log trades. Netpicks encourages their trading students and clients to do manual backtests - to really see how every trade worked out. Although this can be done automatically by a platform - it is more of a mindset to want to take the time to study your trade results. Just including a handful of indicators and hitting the optimize button on Tradestation and hoping for the best does not lead to very good trade systems. UTA is meant as a tool for serious traders that want to improve their trading skills through study and assessment of past trades and results. As such, UTA can help a trader. If you are interested in finding out more or would like some assistance in reading your trades from another system - feel free to email me at: barry.e.miller@gmail.com I would be happy to assist you in any way I can before you make any commitment to spend money. Thanks Barry Miller Trade Log Analytics

G.E. You ask a good question. It is great that you are diligently posting a trading journal. There is a 'Notes" column in the UTA - see column S. First click "ExpandView", then "TradeSetupSummary-Show", then move to column S. You can widen the column by clicking the top of the column in the gray header area, then use the mouse to drag the right side border to the right. When you click "Hide", the column width should stay that width. I am not sure if you are asking to move Column S after K so that it is closer to the Log area. Let me know if this is the question. Although it can be done, it would not be a good idea to embed screen shots of setups and exits to the UTA log - as this would make the Excel file size HUGE. One thought is to add an hyperlink to the image file into the Notes. So you could save the screen shot on your drive in a subdir, then add the hyperlink to the image file. This saves a lot of space and still gives quick access to the screen shot - Great Idea!!! It does not make sense to add all trades from a lot of different trading systems into a single UTA Log. I am not sure what value that provides - you are not statistically testing a "trade system". But . . . I am working on a portfolio module for UTA that would read and compile trades from different UTA Logs into a new log. The idea is to test them together as a portfolio and run an Equity Curve Money Management Analysis on the portfolio of trades. You are not testing a single trading system - but you are getting a look at the equity curve of the group of systems. Also, I am nearing completion of a MonteCarlo Simulation module using the trade statistics gathered from the UTA, or input independently without the UTA. The simulation will give you an interesting grasp of just how robust your system is by randomly simulating thousands of trails of multiple trades. You can see potential drawdown, potential # consecutive losing runs, probability of busting the account, etc. It will be a great tool for serious traders. If you have some feedback or ideas on these concepts - email me at barry.e.miller@gmail.com and I will be happy to discuss them with you. Keep up the great work and best of luck with your analysis and trading. Barry

Great idea - it is difficult to figure out what everyone wants so thanks for the ideas. I designed the trade log area to minimize the data entry, but there is nothing wrong with collecting more information on a a trade. One possible thought - if you collect the highest high and lowest low during all bars while of the trade is in place, you can determine the maximum adverse excursion - or the amount the trade went against you at any time. This is useful to help set tighter stops. Lots of luck - Barry