Data Access

BioComp Dakota (End of Day) accesses data from folders of Metastock formatted data or text files.  Specify the date range you wish to use and build a list of security data to feed your trading bots. There is no limit to the number of data series that can be supplied to the bots, but a selected trading bot may need to be programmed to use data beyond the traded secruity. Select to trade the open or close using data between specified dates or specified years of history.

BioComp Dakota R/T accesses either historical text files of ticks or bars created by the included Tick Historian or that has been exported from other software tools. You can select a date/time range to use and convert bar or tick histories into any of four (4) bar types: Time based, Ticks/bar, Volume/bar or Range/bar. Dakota R/T also sports a tick filter, dropping nasty tick-goblins from your data should a specified price change be seen.

Running in Real-Time, you select a ticker from a list of those in your Medved Quotetracker portfolio and push the GO button.

Trading Bot Choices
BioComp Dakota (EOD and R/T) Select a bot from a tree of alternatives and when you push the "Go" button, Dakota will clone a pool of bots of the specified amount, each with a bit different set of adapted parameter values. You can have Dakota initialize them evenly across the parameter range(s) or let the bots initialize themselves using their built-in algorithms. When running, Dakota automatically adapts the parameters based on their equity performance.  Combine the signals from the collection of bots by using the currently single best bot, the average of all the bots or the top best % of the bots in the Swarm (collection).

EquityManagement
BioComp Dakota (EOD and R/T) As Dakota walks through bars, the bots' trading performance is calculated over the last N bars. This result is used for bot trading system parameter adaptation. You can apply slippage and commissions, fixed or variable, to your trades and express your equity gains in points or money and have a starting account size. In the end-of-day Dakota, you can project your signals into the future so you can see today what action you need to take tomorrow.  Trade long, short or both.  Apply a variety of existing stops or write your own!  Employ one or multiple stops at the same time, even of the same or different types.

Build Your Own Bots
BioComp Dakota has a built-in ScriptBot editor that uses Visual Basic Script for authoring your own adaptive trade-bots.  Express your creativity and find out whether your favorite trading systems will perform better by being adaptive. You can also build bots in Visual Basic 6 using available source code and some users have ventured to build bots in Microsoft's .NET products (C#). Most of the available bots are ScriptBots, offering a good starting point with plenty of examples.

Build Your Own Stops too
BioComp Dakota's built-in ScriptBot editor flips into ScriptStop mode, enabling to you write new stops as well. Again, most of the available stops are ScriptBStops, offering a good starting point with examples.

Pure Walk-Forward Results
Yes, 100% walk-forward results. There is no "back-fitting" in Dakota. Bots get data, give signals and adapt each bar as they march forward through your data. What you get is hypothetical truth about how well your trading system (bot) does on a security during a time period.

Get the Stats
Get the trading details in Dakota's trading report, including more than 30 performance metrics, including trades, gains and loses vs. buy-n-hold, maximum drawdown, % of perfect trading, % direction correct, trade average % return, equity straightness and much more.

Deep Scanning
Dakota EOD performs "Deep Scanning", enabling you to run a swarm configuration (bot, equity settings, stops, etc.) on successive tickers to seek ticker/swarm combinations that generate an equity curve that smoother than a specified smoothness measure. When one is encountered, Dakota pops-up a Microsoft Word report and then moves on to the next ticker.  This "data mining" method is regarded as a screening process to find systems that work well when you are exploring new opportunities.

Run N Times...
Dakota EOD and R/T enable you to run the same swarm configuration on a ticker N times (like 10, or 30), each with a bit different results due to purposeful noise injection in the bots' adaptation process. This gives you stats on whether the trading systems' performance is repeatable and how much so. Performance statistics data and equity curves are exported to disk so you can analyze the results, particularly in Microsoft Excel.

Export Signals
Of course, you can use the trading signals within Dakota itself, but you can also export them, including Date, Price and Signal, to disk for use in other trading packages.