Make sure NT8 has built in buy and hold comparison

[Keymaster101]

Please make sure NT8 has BUILT IN buy and hold comparison to any strategy, so every strategy can easily be tested. This is VERY important.

Other programs have this feature built in. This feature quickly tells you how profitable you really are.

[NinjaTrader_ChelseaB]

Hello Keymaster101,

Thank you for your note.

I'm not quite sure what Buy and Hold is. Can you clarify this for me?

Are you asking if you can keep a position open over multiple sessions?

[Keymaster101]

"Buy and hold" means you buy the same stock(s) you are testing in your custom strategy and hold them to the last possible time. You can then compare how you custom strategy preformed relative to a buy and hold strategy. This way you can see of all your effort coding the strategy was worth the effort.

For example, you have a chart showing the DJIA from Jan 1 2003 to Jan 1 2014 and you have $100,000 in your account. You code a custom strategy that buys and sells N number of shares Y number of times, based on something you like, say... moving average crossovers. This custom strategy nets $ 110,000 profit (Net profit = profitable trades - nonprofitable trades - commission - slippage) over that same ten year period.

The buy and hold comparison would place a long trade worth $100,000 (your entire account balance) at the start of time (Jan 1 2003) and exit the long trade at the end of time (Jan 1 2014). The net profit in this case would be ~ $86,000.

By comparing your custom strategy to that of buy and hold you now know you were able to net $24,000 more ($110,000 - $86,000 = $24,000).

Most money managers use some form of buy and hold strategy's (~55% stocks, ~35% bonds and ~10% comedies).

So now that you know you beat buy and hold at least on a test case bases, you can better decide what portion of you portfolio you want to invest in your custom strategy. If you did not beat buy and hold then there is not much incentive to go live with your custom strategy.

With the way markets have risen over the past few years it appears beating buy and hold can be challenging. However I am looking forward to seeing strategies that beat buy and hold.

Buy and Hold is primarily used during back testing.

[NinjaTrader_ChelseaB]

Hi Keymaster101,

Just to clarify, a buy and hold would be a column that shows what a single trade (with the same quantity of contracts as orders in the strategy), that is not closed, would have done over the same test period for a comparison.

While there is not a column with a dynamic like this, I am happy to submit this as a feature request in your behalf.

It will then be up to our development department to decide to implement this new feature on a future version of NinjaTrader.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for any other suggestions or inquiries you may have.

[koganam]

Please make sure NT8 has BUILT IN buy and hold comparison to any strategy, so every strategy can easily be tested. This is VERY important.

Other programs have this feature built in. This feature quickly tells you how profitable you really are.

You can code that right now, albeit you would have to show the value of the BuyAndHope strategy on the chart using DrawTextFixed(). You would not be able to return it in the Strategy Report directly.