I'm glad to see someone else mention the t+3 clearance issue. I primarily trade in IRAs in which the use of margin isn't allowed. Consequently, I always have to wait the 3 day settlement time before my funds from a long sell (can't short in IRAs either) are available to trade again. In "Cash" accounts and with the use of margin this isn't an issue as the funds can be reused immediately.
My principal use of AB is to backtest trading strategies and there is no way to take this settlement time into account during a backtest. Sometime ago (a year maybe) after I brought this to Tomasz's attention, he said he thought adding this settlement time lag to the backtester would be a good thing and thought it might give AB a competitive edge since to his knowledge no other backtesting software handled it either. At the time, I told him I always just attempted to achieve maximum total returns in my backtests knowing full well I could never achieve them because I will always have a portion of my portfolio unavailable for trading. To my knowledge this issue has never been addressed and I don't know where it fits in the priority of enhancements (?). Dan Note: I dont think the Broker Feed => Medved QT => Amibroker solution to genericizing the plugin issue is a bad idea either. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re your point on scalping. > There are people who are doing scalping in an IB--->QT environment. >I am > guessing they are not suffering any substantial efficiency losses as they > are quite successful. Possibly I am mis-understanding something about the way the funds from intraday trades are cleared but if I have take 1% on an intraday trade and then have to wait t+3 for the funds to be available haven't I reduced my returns to 1%/3? If that isn't the case (I don't have to wait 3 days to put the closed intraday trade funds back to work) then I would love to go to IB (based on the number of others who use it and the body of published work that will help me make the transition to AT). brian_z --- In [email protected], "brian_z111" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Rakesh, > > I am with you on everything there (happy to pay for ad free > enviornment etc). > > As per your previous comment: > > > > > A solution that covers Broker Feed---->MedVed QT-------> > >>AmiBroker > > > can cover > > > > the needs of a large portion of the universe of AB clients. > > Re your point on scalping. > > > There are people who are doing scalping in an IB--->QT environment. > >I am > > guessing they are not suffering any substantial efficiency losses > as they > > are quite successful. > > Possibly I am mis-understanding something about the way the funds > from intraday trades are cleared but if I have take 1% on an intraday > trade and then have to wait t+3 for the funds to be available haven't > I reduced my returns to 1%/3? > > If that isn't the case (I don't have to wait 3 days to put the closed > intraday trade funds back to work) then I would love to go to IB > (based on the number of others who use it and the body of published > work that will help me make the transition to AT). > > brian_z > >
