UTA Questions

[UrmaBlume 10]

A fast trading scalper makes 50 round trips per day and wants to look at a monht's trading in UTA. Must the trade data for each of these 1,000 + trades be entered manually? Does UTA read raw trade data exported from any of the most popular trading packages?

 

In additiion to a list of trades, Periodical Returns, and performance graphs, below is a list of fields where data is returned for total trades, long trades and short trades for users of Trade Station. All of these reports are available at a click for any time period

 

The question here is does UTA present any data not represented here and if so what and what is it's value?

 

All of these trading stats are free and are available with just a couple of clicks in many packages. What is the cost of UTA?

 

 

 

 

 

[Barry-TradeLogAnalytics 10]

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

[tjnoon 10]

Thanks for the thorough reply Barry. UrmaBlume, I hope that answers your questions. You did ask how much the UTA sells for. Typically, it has sold for about $300. Please feel free to follow up with more questions and either Barry or myself would be happy to respond in kind.

 

A few ways that I have personally found great value in using the UTA is when I sit down to workout a tradeplan or to design a trade system. For me, I have to manually enter the trades, one by one to really get a feel for what I'm trying to achieve. I can't possibly explore or manually backtest all the possible opportunites, markets, timeframes, etc. So I settle on a few good ones and go from there. The UTA gives me a way to quickly witness the wins and losses, trade by trade. I can scan down my win/loss column and quickly get feel for the relationship between the wins and losses. I can see the losing streaks, subsequent winning streaks, and this might sound strange, but I can feel that level of discomfort when I post the 5th losing trade out of the last 7, for example. Then, when I see the next 16 out of 18 trades win, and a new equity high, I begin to get a deeper understanding of what trading this system will be like. When I notice that despite the losses that are randomly scattered throughout, I can quickly see that my system is growing its equity, the overall session stats are solid and the weekly results are solid. My confidence finally achieves a level that is necessary for my ability to trade the system in a disciplined, business-like way. You can't possibly get that kind of 'thing' from an automated backtest, in my humble opinion. Logically you might be able to, but psychologically, I don't think so. And trade psychology is the make or break (usually break) for most traders. For me, it is exactly that kind of thing that has made all the difference for me as a trader.

 

My trade style seems a lot different though than what you described in your question. I used to try to trade with the high level of frequency you described but not anymore. My approach is to try to get a steady and consistent winning record, day after day and then get out of the market. So I only need to see my system working during my designated trade time and that helps mitigate the amount of work required to track trades in UTA, manually. Consequently, I find keep my trade costs way down and find myself trading smarter, not harder. Then I could go play with my kids..

[Lost Trader 10]

I do think that you should at least add MAE & MFE to the UTA. This information is currently collected today by my current method & I do not want to lose good information by switching to your tool.

[Barry-TradeLogAnalytics 10]

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

[Lost Trader 10]

TJ, I am concerned that you reacted negatively to me -- I am NOT trying to rain on your parade or denigrate your effort. I would like to offer suggestions to help improve it so it works for a wider audience. But I can't speak for the other poster.

 

You are correct that not every one cares about MAE, MFE. So what would make more sense is if the spreadsheet would allow one to add user columns for the additional info each user wants to save on a per trade basis which your calculations ignore. Not the notes field, but actual columns adjacent to the other input fields, so that cut & paste from an excel export would work.

 

best regards,

LT

[Barry-TradeLogAnalytics 10]

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 Trader 10]

Thank you, Barry. And I apologize for my error - I realized it as soon as I submitted but apparently have no way to correct my own post on this board.

[tjnoon 10]

Just thought I'd stop in and see who was posting what and to answer any questions that someone might have and noticed that my partner Barry has been taking care of it. Thank you Barry! I apologize for being out of the loop a little bit these past several weeks but I've been traveling and working hard on a new trade system. Soon I will be posting some new results from my own backtesting. I was hoping more UTA users would be interchanging ideas by now on this forum but I guess some things just take time to build. I know that many are finding success with their newly found information as they continue to plot their trades into the UTA. I know of one trader who has taken an already proven system and has been manually backtesting a series of data with a filtering idea he has, and so far, his results seem to be bearing out his theory and he has been able to significantly improve his results.

 

The important thing is the use UTA for what it is good or, and not try to make it something that it is not. It is a powerful tool but a tool is only as good as the person using it. Give me a hydraulic hammer and I'd probably shoot myself in the thumb whereas a talented builder would do something a bit more productive with it. The UTA can help you stretch your creativity and imagination as a trader. What you can learn by testing new ideas with UTA can only help you become better as a trader. That is its intention. A broader vision and insight into your trade data can only be a good thing. Most people don't bother of course, but then again, most people fail as traders.

 

LT, thank you for the suggestion. Barry and I have discussed this idea and it might actually find its way into a future version. I'm happy though that you are in contact with Barry directly on this.

[handle 10]

Is there any updates to UTA? I have excel 2007.

 

Thank you.

[karl9000 10]

TJ,

 

How do you change the analysis time intervals in UTA? I tried changing them in the data entry tah, but they don't seem to carry forward to the other tabs (e.g., Time Of Day tab). I want to look at half hour windows rather than the default ones.

 

Thanks!

[tjnoon 10]

Karl,

 

Sorry for the delay in answering this post. Did you figure out the answer to your question? You make the changes in the yellow colored fields in the TimeofDay Summary section. You have to click on the 'expand view' button to 'unhide' that part of the UTA.

[karl9000 10]

TJ,

 

Dang, I was hoping you would ignore this!

 

Yeah, I figured it out. It helps if you put in time frames that reflect the actual trade data (exchange time) and not local time (Mountain time). I couldn't figure out why, when I changed the first time frame to 650 to 700, I "lost" all the data that I thought should be there. Well, DUH! :doh:

 

All my data starts at 850 echange time, not 650! :crap:

 

All is well, dude!

[tjnoon 10]

Lol.. Yeah, gee.. That never even occurred to me. I've said it so many times in the live trade room that I just take for granted that everyone is on exchange time :missy:. There's so many people trading with us, all over the world, and many different markets, brokers and exchanges all in different time zones that in order to avoid confusion en masse, we just decided to set all our charts to their respective exchange times. Glad you figured it out.