Hi there!
I'm new to MS, just got it a week ago and have been playing a bit, trying to get a good idea of what it can do for me, and what I can do with it.

In this brief time, I've come across some questions. I realize some of them might have already been asked before, but I searched the forum and googled a bit and found nothing.
If you feel some of these questions are not worth answering because they have already been discussed, just tell me so and I'll look harder.

Ok, here I go:

1.- When I open a chart, MS loads and displays roughly 2 years of data. If I want to load more data I have to go through each chart and edit X-axis properties. Is there a way to set it as a default, so that everytime I open a chart MS will load data from the oldest available?

2.- When I use system the system tester (have only tried the MACD Expert system so far), and I set the entry and exit commission to 0, the tester shows stocks with profits and stocks with losses. But when I set commissions, I have not a single one with profits, all show huge losses. For what is worth, entry and exit commissions are roughly 1.5% of transaction. (For example, without commissions, a particular stock shows 55% profit; with commissions, the same stock shows 83.74% loss)

3.- I have recieved some corrupted data (working on that, so they send me the files without errors), in a way that some stocks are shown in the chart with a price of 0 some days. This is not much of a problem, since I realize the data is broken, but these particular stocks show a profit of 0% and are traded 0 times when fed to the system tester. If I select one of these stocks to see detailed results, under the summary, this appears "0 Daily Bars 00-00-0000 Through 00-00-0000 (0 Days)". Anyone care to explain why this happens?

Well, anyways, if somebody can help me thanks in advance!
I'm off to play more with MS and see if I can can think of more questions

Hi Hurst,

You will find heaps of info in these locations:-

Equis International Online Com... » Resource Library » Video Instruction and Webinar Sessions

Equis International Online Com... » Equis International » Online Help » MetaStock FAQ
 
Equis International Online Com... » Special Interest Groups » Tips & Tricks

Cheers,

oz

Hi and welcome.

I am using MS just over a year but will try to help.

1. When you click on the Open button the window to select the security opens. Somewhere in the top right corner there should be button Options and after you click on it, Load Options. The Load Options window will give you option to select the number of periods loaded and displayed. Loaded means MS will load the prices and displayed how many of them will show on the screen. Depending on screen size you might want to have different numbers for the two values. For example, I am loading 500 periods and displaying 250, in order not to have too many daily bars stuck next to each other. That means you can see the last 250 periods but all 500 are loaded so using the horizontal scroll bar you can always see the first 250 periods without re-loading the security. Once you select these Load Options it will apply to all securities opened from that moment on, until you change the Load Options values again.

2. Some experts might give you loss even if you don't anticipate it. It is only software after all and life isn't perfect. Wish it was... :) Usually I run all systems starting with PS (I believe there are 23 of them) on the security you are interested in, and that can show you the best one over the period you chose. Of course, you can run multiple systems on multiple securities. The CTRL holding multi selection work when selecting the systems and the securities.

Another important thing when doing the tests, it took me long to realise. Depending how realistic you want the system test you have to be careful with the amounts selected. I am doing my tests with fixed amount, for example $4,000 in each transaction. But to get correct results you have to select higher amount of starting equity, usually 5x more. This is because if the first couple of trades are losses, this will cut the available equity for the following trades. As I said, it depends how realistic you want the test.

You might want to have a situation where it really lowers your equity with every loss, so you might want to start with a certain amount of Initial Equity and then every transaction to be 100% of available equity for example. That way it will really lower your available equity after losses.

Sometimes I just want to see the performance if a certain amount was invested in every trade. Then I select the Initial Equity 5x of the amount for each trade and that usually shows you the test results as if you always had the $4,000 to invest (even after some losses).

I hope this wasn't too confusing, the way I explained it. Cheers.

Thanks for your answers guys. I'll check out those links too.
Right now I'm experiencing some crashes when I run the system tester, but still working on isolating the cause.
I'll bother you all with more questions as they come along...