[MAS: feature requests] Re: [MAS-discuss] Building generators

[Jim C. <jt...@di...>]

Hi Paul.

Thanks for the comments.

> I have been building a whole series of generators over the past few days
> and have found the following:-
> 
> 1. I built a generator which is a compound generator and uses a time
> extension before the right event. When I tried to edit the time period I
> wasn't able to do so - the individual generators which make up the
> compound event can be edited but I couldn't find a way to get at the
> interval setting.

I believe this is so.  To do that would be useful and I'll consider that a
feature request.

> 
> 2. I found it easier ( and more flexible ) to build the complexity into
> several lower level generators before trying to combine the whole thing
> into a more complex module. This allows allows the re-use of the lower
> level generators, which I ultimately did to build several others.

Yes, principles of good software development sometimes apply also to
application use :-)

> 
> 3. There is s real need for a GUI facility for generator and even
> indicator building/editing and I hope this will be in a future release.

Yes, I've been wanting to add this for a while.  It's on the feature list
for the "commercial" version when/if that comes about.

> 
> Generally speaking I think mas is one hell of a good product. I spoke
> recently with a colleague who uses a commercial ( $USD20,000) analysis
> package and it takes hours to run against about 500 stocks on a faster
> machine than mine. I now have 2900+ US stocks and 1300+ ASX stocks. The
> analysis on the US takes about 6 mins and on the ASX about 2, so I am
> impressed. The commercial packages come with fairly fixed generators (
> to use mas parlance ) and building a new one is not something which can
> be done.

I appreciate the positive feedback.  I'm surprised though that an expensive
commercial package would compare so unfavorably.  Are the analysis criteria
close enough that it's a fair test?  If the commercial pkg was used with a
set of very complex nested criteria and mas was run with simple criteria,
this would not be a fair comparison.

I'm also surprised that one can't build new "generators" with the
commercial packages you're familiar with.  Maybe you don't always get what
you pay for.

> 
> I also found that there is the old do I count from 0 or 1 problem
> between selecting an indicator and viewing an indicator - when building
> the generator the indicator is always 1 less than the number assigned
> when viewing - sometimes causes a problem if you are not careful.

Not quite sure what you mean here.  Can you give a specific example?

> 
> Just out of interest I built and indicator which checks for %D/%k Xover
> above/below a signal line and also RSI Xover a signal either 3 days
> prior or 3 days after. This gives a very good buy signal, but is less
> able to pick a sell. Backtesting this against the US market generated
> some amazingly good results.

Excellent comments.  Glad to see someone is braving the rough waters to
make use of mas's more powerful features.


Jim