In contrast to the hundreds of man hours needed to crunch numbers in the past, OmniTrader™ from Nirvana Systems, Inc. is a breeze. It is a totally automated trading system that can be used to trade anything from stocks to futures to mutual funds. For those of you who like to sit back and let the computer do all the work, this is the program for you. After I seamlessly imported my existing daily data (formats include AIQ, CSI, MetaStock, and Worden Bros. TC2000), OmniTrader took over.

OmniTrader first tests its own systems against the symbols in your portfolio and decides which systems and indicators work best against each symbol. Systems included in the program range from trendline breakouts, money flow, stochastics, RSI and MACD, to divergence.

After testing your data, OmniTrader generates buy and sell signals using the results. A summary then details which buys and sells the program generated and gives you a "voting" range on what indicators worked best, so you can explore those indicators further. You also are able to see which systems are generating the signals and how that system backtested on each individual signal. Automated patterns such as trendlines and candlesticks are drawn for you on the chart.

The most impressive thing is the speed at which all this is completed. The time to perform a 500-trading-day backtest, 125-day forward test, on 27 systems and on 21 stocks is approximately 45 seconds.

One Size Fits All
OmniTrader can be programmed to suit many types of investors and traders. You can set it to short-, medium-, and long-term mode. You can tell it to only take long trades and ignore the short side of the market. The program is extremely user-friendly; nothing is more than a few mouse clicks away.

Whenever I start trading a new system, I am always a little edgy. A few nights sleep are usually lost wondering if the system will work in real time. The system backtested fine, but can I make real money with it? Although that will always depend on how the trader uses the knowledge from any system, this is where OmniTrader's Trading Game™ and Lab Mode™ really help out. You are able to trade as if it were real time "out of sample" without the stress and the negative emotions. The Trading Game will actually tell you in dollars how well you did over the specified time frame. A couple of years could be traded in about 20 minutes. Whatever you see in the Lab Mode is what you would see if you were trading the system on that day and time.

Not for Techies
For techies who like to create their own systems and indicators, however, the program is limited. Changes generally cannot be made. OmniTrader is not a black box; you are given the rhyme and reason of why a particular trade is being made. But if you would like to change more than the number of bars that the stochastics is looking back, you will be disappointed. OmniTrader says that the systems and indicators they have chosen are all that a trader needs. This might be true for some, but you really don't have a choice in the matter.

Given this lack of flexibility, it is safe to say this product is aimed at the beginner investor and technician. That said, what I like is that I could throw a whole bunch of indicators on any issue and get a report back in seconds on what worked and what didn't. This aspect, in and of itself, is not a trading system but eventually could become part of one. For example, if one ran the testing module and found out that the S&P 500 had a high level of profitability with MACD or RSI, then one would be wise to incorporate that knowledge into his or her trading system.

OmniTrader is by no means the holy grail. It will, however, start the beginner off on the right foot and give the professional a very quick way of testing hunches on certain indicators in a matter of moments. What used to take months of testing by hand or days by mainframe computers, could now be done in moments on a PC with OmniTrader. With its super-fast speed, you'll even have time to walk the dog.

© Financial Trader Magazine

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