Tradingmarkets – Introduction to AmiBroker Programming

Learn How To Backtest Your Best Trading Ideas In One Day – Guaranteed!

How would you like to have the ability to backtest your best trading ideas? And learn how to do this from one of the best in the industry?

Introducing Programming in Amibroker – Learn How to Backtest Your Best Trading Ideas in One Day

Here is What You Will Receive

You will start the course with minimal to no knowledge on how to backtest in AmiBroker. Six hours later you will…

1) Know how to program a strategy.

2) Know how to backtest and validate that strategy.

3) Learn how to improve upon that strategy.

4) And be able to receive the daily signals for that strategy.

This is knowledge which you will be able to apply to your trading for the rest of your life.

In this class you will start from the beginning and within hours have the skill to take one of our Strategy Guidebooks and program it in AmiBroker yourself. Plus, your personal code will generate the signals for the upcoming day!

Course Objectives

This course is designed for traders who want to learn how to use AmiBroker to create backtests and/or generate trading signals, but who have little or no familiarity with the AmiBroker language.

At the completion of this course, you will be able to:

Create your own custom indicators, and add them to an AmiBroker chart.
Backtest basic trading strategies in order to see which ones have edges, which ones do not, and take the strategies that have edges and make them better.
Verify that your backtest results are correct.
Generate trading signals for the upcoming trading day.
What’s Included
Six hours of online instruction. The course will be interactive and will also be recorded for you to download to your computer.
Several break-out sessions where you will spend hands-on time with AmiBroker.
AFL code templates that you can easily modify for your own needs.
A free copy of the Strategy Guidebook “ConnorsRSI Selective Strategy for ETFs and Stocks”, which we will use as the basis for our backtest. By the end of the class, you will be able to take this strategy, program it in AmiBroker yourself, and get the signals for the upcoming day.
Prerequisites

A desire to learn basic AmiBroker programming.
AmiBroker version 5.5 or later installed.
A data source configured to work with AmiBroker (we can help you with this before the class, if needed).

Your Instructor

You will be taught by Matt Radtke, the Director of Research for Connors Research. Matt has previously managed teams of professional programmers and has the gift of making programming simple-to-learn. Since becoming the Director of Research, Connors Research has been able to create and program some of its best research and strategies in its history. Matt will walk you through step-by-step on how to properly backtest in AmiBroker so you too can begin testing your best trading strategies immediately.

Imagine having the ability to have a trading idea and to be able to backtest it on your own. You will learn exactly how to do this in this course.

Topics

AmiBroker from 10,000 Feet (20 min)

AmiBroker is a comprehensive technical analysis program, with advanced charting, backtesting and scanning capabilities. For those not familiar with the application, we will quickly cover some of the major areas of functionality. For more information, see the Tutorial section in the AmiBroker help file.

• Charting

• Auto Analysis

• Preferences

• Help

Data Sources (20 min)

AmiBroker does not directly provide any useful price data. Rather, it is a set of tools which can be used with data from a variety of providers, including Norgate, CSI, TeleChart, Yahoo and others. We will discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of each of these providers, as well as items that are important to consider for any provider you might decide to use.

• Providers:

Norgate Premium Data
CSI Data
TeleChart
Yaho

• Considerations:

Frequency of updates
Historically adjusted data
Delisted securities and survivorship bias
Database speed
Index constituents
Watch Lists & Groups
Price
Auto Analysis Window (30 min)

The Auto Analysis window will be your home base for any of the analysis tasks that you might wish to perform in AmiBroker, including scans and backtests. We will discuss each type of analysis, including what it’s used for, how to configure it, and how to execute it.

• Scan/Explore/Backtest/Optimize

• Settings

• Parameters

• Watchlists

Why they’re useful
How to use them
How to create them
Coding Part 1 (40 min)

In our first coding session, we will introduce the AFL scripting language and the tools for creating and running your first script. Fortunately, you need only a limited set of commands to implement a basic script, particularly if you have a template to start from. However, AmiBroker contains a rich set of indicators and other functions that will ultimately allow you to test a wide variety of trading ideas.

• Built-In Editor vs. External Editors

• AmiBroker Help

• Review of the basic AFL Code Template

• Comments

• Controlling the environment with SetOption

• Standard Variables:

Open/High/Low/Close
Volume, Open Interest, Aux 1, Aux 2
Buy/Sell/Short/Cover
Pricing
• How Arrays Work

• The Ref and MA functions

Exercise: Running a Scan (20 min)

A Scan is the quickest, easiest way to generate a set of signals from your trading rules. Starting from a code template, you will implement a simple set of Buy & Sell rules which can be executed as an AmiBroker scan.

Coding Part 2 (40 min)

In our second coding session, we will introduce several more common AFL functions. We will then move on to some typical trading strategy concepts like setups, limit orders, stop losses and profit targets.

• Common Functions:

ExRem
IIf
MA
Min/Max
HHV/LLV
Ref
ConnorsRSI
Plot
• Conditionals

• Loops

• Limit orders

• Stop Losses and Profit Targets

• Delisted securities

Coding: Explorations (20 min)

AmiBroker Explorations allow you to easily extract data, format and present that data in AmiBroker, and export it to a CSV file that can be opened with Excel. In this session we will discuss the variables and functions used to create an Exploration, as well as how to execute an Exploration and export the data.

• Filter

• AddColumn

• ExRem

• Walk-through of the Exploration template

• Executing the Exploration

• Exporting Results

Exercise: Explorations (10 min)

An AmiBroker Exploration is similar to a Scan, except that it provides a lot more flexibility. Using the Code Template, we will create and execute a basic Exploration.

Coding: Indicators (20 min)

AmiBroker allows you to easily add built-in indicators like RSI and Moving Averages to your charts. But what if you want to plot a custom indicator like ConnorsRSI? In this coding session, we will discuss the AFL commands that are required for creating a custom indicator, as well as how to add that indicator to the AmiBroker environment.

• Plot

• Param

• The AmiBroker\Formulas\Custom directory

• Adding a custom indicator to a chart

Exercise: Adding a Custom Indicator (10 min)

During this hands-on exercise, you will add the ConnorsRSI and Historical Volatility indicators to your AmiBroker environment.

Backtesting (30 min)

A backtest allows us to see how a trading strategy might have performed over some time period in the past when applied to a specific set of securities. Although the historical results produced by a backtest are no guarantee of how the strategy will perform in the future, they can still provide valuable insights into the strategy’s strengths and weaknesses. In this session we will discuss how backtesting works in AmiBroker as well as how to troubleshoot a misbehaving backtest.

How a backtest works
Setting the Date Range for the test
Specifying a Watchlist
Viewing Results
All Trades vs. Portfolio tests
Curve Fitting
Avoiding the mistakes over 90% of people make when they do backtesting.
Walk-through of the backtest template
Using Scan or Explore to troubleshoot
Exercise: Running a backtest on the ConnorsRSI Selective Strategy (30 min)

This hands-on exercise will give you an opportunity to run a backtest on the strategy described in the Guidebook provided with the course materials. Those that wish to implement the strategy rules themselves may do so, but a fully functional version of the AFL for the strategy will be provided as well. This version can be used to verify your own results, or as a template from which to make modifications to the strategy.

Common Mistakes (20 min)

The more power and flexibility that a tool provides for its user, the more opportunities there are for things to go awry. This is just as true for software tools as it is for motor vehicles and chainsaws. In this session we will teach you how to avoid common pitfalls that occur when doing analysis within AmiBroker.

Looking into the future
Wrong entry/exit prices
IFF vs IF
Assignment vs Equality (= and ==)
Max Positions
Additional Sources and Q&A

Yahoo Boards
“Quantitative Trading Systems” by Howard Bandy
Total Time Estimate: 6 hours

By the end of this course, you will be in the position to test your strategies, improve upon your strategies, and scan for the set-ups for your strategies.

Learning how to program in AmiBroker can save you hundreds of hours and make you a more profitable trader. When you get those great trading ideas, you will now be able to test them immediately on your own!