Jim Dean Elite   Posts: 1059 Joined: 10/11/2012 Location: L'ville, GA  User Profile | Here are a few pointers that might help. I'll try to note things that are likely to change soon (but not certain of course): A. an OVest "STRATEGY" is comprised of FOUR components: 1. an OVest "SYSTEM" which is in fact an uploaded OT "Strategy" (refer to OT for what it's strategy looks and works like) 2. specification of the trade DIRECTION(s) that the OVest Strategy will use, from the various L+S trades generated by the OVest System 3. assignment of an OVest Symbol LIST to be used with that OVest Strategy - can be static or dynamic - distinct from lists used by other Strat's 4. optional use of a CONDITION that acts like a filter for the OVest Strategy, blocking or passing Entry signals according to a Boolean rule - the Condition is an OScript formula based either on a symbol (typ an index) of your choosing, OR upon the Equity Curve of the OVest Strat thus far (unmodified by the Condition). B. An OVest Portfolio is a "basket" that holds one or more OVest Strategies, each with an Allocation percent that weights the sizing of trades from multiple strat's in the port, with the starting point position size being established by the OVest strat itself (that value is blackbox). This is btw one of the hardest-to-sort-out-and-follow calc's within the core OVest product. Just think of the percent as a weighting factor for the strategy and that will probably be a good enough handle. ** Currently, the OVest Portfolio is just a "basket" that conveniently groups strat's (you can define as many different Port's as you like). There are currently no Conditions that you can define relative to a particular Portfolio that impact how its component strat's are handled. This will change very soon, with the V3 addition of Portfolio Switcher (similar to Strategy Condition, but acting on the entire basket), and that Switcher will be dramatically enhanced/automated by Portfolio Balancer, a soon-to-be-released "OVestPro" tool. C. An OVest Account holds any number of OVest Portfolios &/or OVest Strategies (ie strat's not in a portfolio "basket". You can create an unlimited number of Accounts (for testing), and up to five live accounts for live(inc.paper trading) (to different brokerage accounts). The OVest Account has a huge number of "Settings" which I won't describe here ... look at the "Account Settings" panel. Of these, the one that has the most sweeping impact on your historical-simulation modelling is the date range at the top of the panel. All of the other settings affect both simulation and live trading with that account. The settings act as "filters" to control which trades presented to the Account by its component Strats (sep or part of Ports) are actually used, and also can dramatically impact the position sizing of those trades. If you change even one of those settings, it can have major impacts on your overall account performance. Be sure to test in historical simulation before going live! D. The Trade Processor is a "final step", applying only to LIVE accounts. Currently it is a standalone engine that you run on a local PC or in a personally-leased Cloud partition (many have successfully been running it in Amazon, and a few in Azure - lots of discussion threads about that). The TProc grabs info from OVest, grabs info from your broker (re avail funds), and tries its best to get as many if not all of the OVest trades for each day to be processed (exits then entries). Since OVest is not currently tied into the brokerage, it doesn't know how much money is avail, so it transmits its sizing for each trade to the TProc as a PERCENTAGE. This keeps it generic ... but also means that the TProc interpretation of the actual trade sizes differs somewhat from OVest's presumption when it calcs the ongoing equity of the account ... that is, the OVest equity at the HRE may not match your brokerage. *** This going to change significantly, fairly soon, as Nirvana brings up a Server-based TProc ... ie running on their servers, without you having to set it up or manage it re installation etc. From that point forward, many new "channels of communication" will be available between the OVest analysis/director functions listed in A-C, and the TProc execution logic. The TProc logic is going to be made much more "intelligent" as a result, and there should be little or no discrepancies between OVest tracking and TProc tracking, once that process is fully integrated. I think that covers all the big stuff. Of course there are a lot of howto details, and a lot of that is still in flux. I hope this helps! I'm reposting it in the knowledgebase (click here) so it doesn't get lost, and so that amendments and additions can be collected together with it as time goes on. [Edited by Jim Dean on 5/10/2014 10:02 AM] | |
