MultiCharts: Trading Software for Automated Trading and Backtesting

You can backtest and optimize a portfolio.... can you trade a portfolio the same way?

Or do you have to add your signal to each individual symbol in different charts?

This makes money management a bit difficult since your strategy won't know how many positions you are in at any given time and how to make optimal use of available funds.

TS Support... we never heard your thoughts on adding a keywords that returns current account equity, available margin/buying power, etc. so as to calculate proper position size. This is probably some of the most important info an autotrader needs!!

Finding a profitable strategy is not too hard... but managing your funds properly can make a huge difference in the bottom line!

You can backtest and optimize a portfolio.... can you trade a portfolio the same way?

Dear flipflopper

Currently a portfolio cannot be traded in MultiCharts. This is a high-priority feature and we are planning to implement it in the near future, although there is no ETA yet.

I agree 100% with flipflopper (and many others) on these features as I trade multiple strategies on multiple markets in multiple timeframes and require a feature to trade all these market-strategies as a portfolio while having access to my account/trades information. A similar feature as TS's RadarScreen with the .PlaceOrder macro capability coupled with their TradeManager window would suffice for now. Anything would be better than having to add a signal to each and every chart window and ensuring the strategies are enabled.

For serious traders or money managers, this is the most sought-after feature that MC is lacking and I'm sure would drive a lot of business your way if it were to be implemented. As it stands right now, MC is the best for intraday trading in a few markets but can't really compete against the likes of even TS when it comes to autotrading hundreds of markets. I want to fully support MC since I think the development team and software is top-notch, but until these aspects are incorporated into the platform I can't really say it's ready for professional use.

Some links I came across addressing the same needs...
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthrea ... genumber=2
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthrea ... ost2864175
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trading ... eased.html

Dear ventus,

Thank you for your suggestions. They have been forwarded to the developers. As Anastassia has already written, we are planning to implement portfolio trading in the near future.

Thanks Dave. You can bet I'll be eagerly waiting! Also, bravo on the DOM feature...very impressive.

Thank you, ventus.

I put in a feature request so let's keep our fingers crossed...

https://www.multicharts.com/pm/viewissu ... _no=MC-231

You can backtest and optimize a portfolio.... can you trade a portfolio the same way?
[..]
This makes money management a bit difficult since your strategy won't know how many positions you are in at any given time and how to make optimal use of available funds.

TS Support... we never heard your thoughts on adding a keywords that returns current account equity, available margin/buying power, etc. so as to calculate proper position size. [..]

Are these features already implemented or still not yet possible?

I noticed that, according to the help files, the Portfolio reserved words are only usable in the Portfolio Backtester, so accessing these values in real-time trading should be done through GlobalVariables?

On a related note, is there a reserved word to get the current account size at the broker (such as GetAccountSize)? I can't seem to find it.

Regards,
Josh

Portfolio Trading is still not available. After further investigation, it will only be possible after implementing a 64-bit version. Running scripts in real-time across multiple instruments, while keeping track of account data and money management, sorting priorities, and displaying the results is so resource-intensive that with a 2GB limit imposed by 32-bit infrastructure it's just not workable.

We'll see how development plans come along after implementing that version.

I second this request :

- we need to be able to size position within a portfolio of several instruments.
- exclusively running a strategy from a chart is very cumbersome.

Thanks.