Adding Securities to an Exploration

[ajwalker]

Hi Jose,
I have recently purchased Tradesim (Enterprise Edition 4.2.2) and Metastock (End of Day 9.1), have read most of the manuals and got things working reasonably well at least to a basic level. However, I need help with the selection of securities in the Metastock Explorer.

On Page 9 of the Tradesim Application Note 1 it tells us that when clicking on "Securities" in the Exploration Editor you are taken to a screen with no title but 2 tabs named "Folders" and "Securities" respectively. These display lists of folders containing security data and, presumably, the securities contained in a selected folder. Each folder and security name have a small check box to the left.

By utilising this screen I assume we can achieve the purpose of Application Note 1 and what is claimed for the Explorer on Page 367 of the Metastock manual, and I quote, "The Explorer is a powerful, multi-purpose analysis tool that can perform in-depth "explorations" on multiple securities across multiple folders."

However when I click the "Securities" button on the Exploration Editor I get 2 different screens, one named "Select Securities for..." and, on clicking on the "Add Securities" button on that screen, another screen named "Add Securities." (This incidentally is how it is shown on Page 380 of the Metastock manual where the Add Sercurities dialogue is almost identical to the Open dialogue).

Neither of these screens have check boxes associated with folder or security names and only securities can ultimately be selected, not folders.

This seems to mean that a folder or series of folders cannot be selected for inclusion in the Exploration, only a list of individual securities. If this is the case then, it seems to me, that virtually each time an Exploration is run (or at least each day to allow for security data updates) 26 selections have to be made to make sure that all valid ASX securities are included. (The security data is stored in folders numbered alphabetically).

It also means that the purpose of the TradeSim Application Note 1 (Creating a Portfolio Security List in Metastock the Easy Way) cannot be fulfilled at least in the manner described in the Note.

Am I missing something here? I would be most grateful for any guidance you can give me.

With kind regards
John Walker :?: :?:

[strw23]

1. go to add securities

2. If you securities are in individual folders ie A, B, C etc the go into folder A and select the ones you want and the press ok.

3. You should now be back in the other screen. Click on add securities again and repeat this for each folder.

4. once all the securities you want have been selected you can then save this as a custom list if you want and then it will always be in your favorites folder.

Scott

[ajwalker]

Thankyou Scott,
I was aware of the procedure you outlined but my question remains, does not this mean that this fairly lengthy and messy procedure has to be carried out at regular intervals to take account of changes to the lists which happen quite frequently. For example you don't want to be carrying out backtesting on the security which is now delisted.

As a corollary to this, are "Favourites" listed as pointers to the data source or are they copies of the data? If the former then daily data updates would be accounted for. If the latter then things like price adjustments would be missed unless the Favourites list was updated almost every day.

Thanks for your patience and your assistance

Regards
John Walker :?:

[strw23]

John I think there are a couple of different answers here.

1. I think it is important to include delisted shares when backtesting. If you had been trading at the time you would be scaning them because you didnt know they would be delisted in the future. By only using current market shares to backtest over X years you are picking shares that you know will still be around hence possibly better shares and this incorparates some form of survivorship bias.

As for your list you have a couple of different options.

2. If you are trading cfds you can just make a custom list to save in favorites based on the cfds your market maker provides, updating whenever they change their list.

3. You could put all your shares into one mass folder and just use all those securities everytime you do an exploration.

Your other question about favourites is they are just shortcuts to where you have your data not copies of it. This way daily changes are recorded. If your data supplier adjust your data for you you will have to continually update this list as you will still have shortcuts in it to reference stocks that no longer exist eg mayne, Intervals and options on this is up to you.

Scott

[ajwalker]

Thanks again Scott,

I think I now understand the situation. It seems that Page 9 of the Application Note 1 is no longer applicable and that it is simply not possible to work on multiple securities across multiple folders as suggested in the Metastock manual.

The idea of manually updating the Favourites list when changes occur to the main securities list is not very appealing, but if that is what has to be done so be it.

Regards
John Walker

[Jose]

Thanks, Scott.

John, unfortunately Equis took a backward step from MetaStock v8.0 on, and removed the ability to add security folders to the explorations.

To get around this problem, you could try the free Add Folders Utility for MetaStock:
http://www.debry.com/add_folders_utility.htm


jose '-)

[ajwalker]

Thanks Jose,
Regards
John Walker