| Reviewed
by Charles Mizrahi of Financial Trader Magazine
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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Austin, Texas 78731 USA
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