Firstly go to the Equis search page at http://www.equis.com/Search/ and then enter "tradesim" into the search field. Click on the "Search" button and what do you find ? Absolutely nothing, right !! (If you do find something which I doubt very much please send me an email at feedback@compuvision.com.au. The management team at Equis must have been replaced).

Have you ever wondered why Equis does not feature our products on their website? Well so have we! In actual fact we have tried to correspond with Equis on a number of occasions starting way back when we first started selling TradeSim, which is now over three years ago. This correspondence has been all to no avail and what is even more puzzling is the fact that in all cases no courtesy reply letter was ever sent back to us.

We would of thought that with the power and flexibility that TradeSim offers existing Metastock users Equis would jump at the chance to host TradeSim as one of their 'Official MetaStock Add-ons'. After all TradeSim only enhances Metastock - it does not actually replace it so their should be no conflict of interest, or is there? The marketing department at Equis obviously sees the reselling of TradeSim along with Metastock as a conflict of interest due to the "enhanced" system testing capabilities that they have added to Metastock in recent times (ala Version 8 and 9).

Anyone who has used TradeSim with Metastock will tell you the comparison between the two products with respect to system testing is like comparing chalk and cheese, so that the feature set added by TradeSim to Metastock makes the combination of the two packages a very powerful trading system analysis platform and makes the combination of the two attractive to serious traders. So why has there been so much silence on the Equis front ? When you start comparing the features between the two products then you can understand why they have ignored us. Owners of version 7 (we still use Version 7.02) of Metastock basically have two upgrade choices. They can either purchase TradeSim or they can simply go for the Metastock upgrade to Version 8.0/9.0 which in our opinion really doesn't offer much more in terms of system testing capabilities; at least not when you compare it with TradeSim. Once you have compared the features between Metastock and TradeSim then the choice is obvious which is why TradeSim has been Equis best kept secret.

But we wouldn't want you to take our word for it, just click here to compare the features for yourself. And if that doesn't convince you have a look at the user testimonies.

Followup

On reading this one of Equis representatives contacted us with an email showing interest in our products and the possibility of promoting it as a third party add on. After discussing with us their unrealistic terms and conditions we decided to leave it in the hands of our main International Distributor Paritech who are also the appointed distributor and reseller of Metastock in Australia. Since then Equis has gone cold on the idea. They say that the Enterprise Edition of TradeSim is too expensive and that the Professional Edition would be competing directly with the system tester built into Version 8. As for being expensive we wouldn't call $1000 AUD cheap for a charting package these days and in our opinion we believe that even the Standard Edition of TradeSim is miles ahead of Metastock's system tester but again we wouldn't want you to take our word for it, just click here to compare the features for yourself. And if that doesn't convince you have a look at the user testimonies.

Update

The following email from LC was sent to us on 31/March/2004

David,

I just wanted to let you know how happy I am with your product. I just got off the phone with MetaStock inquiring about how much it would be to upgrade to version 9.0. I asked the question to the sales representative did they fix the system tester. He replied "yes". I then stated that your system tester is a j__e. Why would I want to pay you a USD249 upgrade fee for MetaStock professional. I stated to him have you heard about TradeSim why isn't TradeSim offered as a plug-in to MetaStock. The sales man immediately wanted to end the conversation.

Initially when I was considering purchasing the Enterprise Edition of TradeSim I believed that the price was extremely outrageous. Now that I have it I believed that it is the best thing that has ever happened to me since I began trading in 1996. I had no idea what the hell I was doing before I got TradeSim. I have lost tens of thousands of dollars trading and I had no idea why. With TradeSim I finally have started to see what it takes to make a good trading system. Previously I purchased Debry.com multisystem system tester, but comparing it to TradeSim it is a j__e.

I still have a lot to learn about TradeSim, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks again.

LC

Is Metastock Version 8 worth the upgrade ?

Click here to read an independent review from David Jenyns of Meta-Formula.