Frank Birch Veteran   Posts: 171 Joined: 3/25/2006 Location: UK  User Profile | Hi to all, Adm, there are many allocation methods to choose from and can be a bit daunting at first! But the first step is to make sure you have your settings correct from the start and not to make mistakes so double check everything. So lets go step by step. GO INTO EDIT SETTINGS 1/ trade source tab Make sure the FOCUS TAB is highlighted make sure you have ALL STRAGEIES enabled Make sure you have the time frame of choice select(if using RTX-3 it will be 3 minutes only) 2/account settings tab starting balance by default is 50k but to be realistic put the actual amount of money you have to trade with try and round it up. leverage should be set to 4(I think this is correct for stocks but you may need to check this) advisor cut off leave blank. 3/trading parameters max allocation set to 3%(this can change but 3% is being conservative). min shares set to 1 max shares set to 100(I see this being a grey area due to the min and max cost of the stocks, like some trading at $10 or $80)so try 100 for now nad keep in mind you may need to change this. To the right hand side of this tab you will see allocation method. you will need to have per trade allocation ticked re use intraday money needs to be ticked. 4/test period tab make sure this is set to back test only 5/simulation constraints you will need to have worse drawdown enabled by default its 20% but you can change this if required but 20% is conservative. 6/commissions This is so important to add! what ever your cost of business is you will need to add this by default its 00.1 but change this to suite. Also worth remembering what ever the cost is it should also be added to the TEST SETTINGS TAB in the TO-DO-LIST so they are both the same. 7/trade selection you do not need to do anything with this. Now once you have gone through this process we go onto the next task. At the top you have a number of allocation methods to choose from correct. Only some of them you need to use and others you need not worry about(this is another thread on its own) so what you need to do is tick on each tab at the top and put a tick in the boxes of the allocation methods I add below. FIXED TRADE SIZE FIXED DOLLAR AMOUNT % OF EQUITY $ TO EQUITY SIZE TO EQUITY FIXED RISK (you may not have this, this allocation method come with the turtle trader plug in this allocation method may also help with the min and max share size) Now once you have done all of the above you can now RUN ANALYSIS. Then comes the interesting part and may be whats confusing you. You now have 5 allocation methods running and it will not take long once its run you will get 5 equity reports showing in different colours. But above the graphs will be another window giving you the results and stats on each allocation method. Normally the allocation method at the top is the best one to use and may be you will find some allocation methods are the same just stick to the top method. If you have giving all the correct information in the settings tab then what you see will be correct. You may still need to change some things like Max % to trade and MAX shares to trade but in geral your good to go. Now once you have found the best allocation method you now go back into realtime mode. drop the chevron on the right hand side of the chart and then go into trade calculator and you then will see your allocation method highlighted now choose this and hit save. Now go into omnipilot and set it up and choose trade plan as default method(this uses your best allocation method that you had found) Also worth noting on RTX-3 its open meaning you can use strategy wizard on the new RT trading block. So if your not happy with the equity reports you see or the draw down is to much run it on strategy wizard to reduce the numbers of trades and better PPT this in turn should reduce your drawdown. I hope this helps. Regards Frank Birch [Edited by Frank Birch on 1/29/2014 5:11 PM] | |
