

Ask HN: What is the best way to test stock market strategies? - bnejad

Either programming or any specific tools. Thanks.
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stocktradr
Good question. What I've done in the past is picked 5 companies that are
widely traded (V, TSLA, AAPL, GOOG, etc.) in markets that you know.

From there, develop out a few different strategies of what you want to test
(formulas, graphing, etc.)

Google, Yahoo!, and other allow for direct pricing feed downloads - check out
[http://goo.gl/KGWqpo](http://goo.gl/KGWqpo)

From there, you can apply your formulas to raw data and see how it stacks up.
Remember, you want to test the hell out of this with a broad range of data.
Start with companies/markets you know first, then go out from there. As others
have suggested, use historical data.

As a tid bit, for testing trading strategies, I use ThinkorSwim since it
offers an obscene amount of tools on live market data for mock trades. Cheers!

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ig1
Many brokerage houses offer "simulated" accounts which you can use to practice
with real data (i.e. they behave like real accounts and use real data except
the transactions aren't actually done) and often have APIs you can use if you
want to automate your strategy.

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hannibal5
Run your strategies trough past data. That's how it's done by professionals.
Remember that data used for testing can't be from same period you used to
construct the strategy/model. Using data from decades ago, is usually safe.

