Why has my OT performance decreased so much?

Q: Why has my OT performance decreased so much?

A:

There are certain things users can do to stress the software which can significantly affect performance. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using OmniTrader. There are other areas, but these are the most common.

1. How many timeframes are you collecting data for? You can check under Edit/Data Periods. The average is about 4 timeframes. Seven or more is typically a lot.

2. Of those timeframes, how many are enabled for voting/analysis? You can check under Edit/Data Periods as well. The more you have enabled, the longer analysis will take to complete.

3. How many bars are being downloaded & stored for each of those timeframes? It’s normal practice to use between 500-2000 bars. Using 10,000 bars or more may be quite taxing, especially when using 50,000 or higher. Large numbers of bars like that should be reserved for testing theories using EOD or the Test Profile. When using high numbers of bars, it is very easy to hit computer memory limits & Microsoft database limits. So when using high bar counts, you will want all other settings to be minimal.

4. How many strategies are enabled? You may check your strategies under Edit/Strategies. 1-5 strategies is typical while 20 or more is considered a high number. Keep in mind that every strategy will be run on every symbol for each enabled timeframe.

5. How many patterns are being analyzed? The patterns are under Edit/Patterns. Keep in mind that every pattern will be run on every symbol for each enabled timeframe.

6. How many symbols are in the RT profile? The more symbols you have the more you need to be concerned with 1-5 above. For example, running 500 symbols with 20 strategies & all patterns on the 1 minute timeframe is extremely demanding. It’s just not possible to run all that analysis on 500 symbols in less than a minute, for every new minute bar, so analysis would never finish except after market close when data has stopped.

7. How many symbols are in the EOD profile? Unlike RT profiles, symbols only download data one at a time, so it’s possible to have more than 500 in your list without affecting download rates & limits. But you still need to be concerned about analysis. The more symbols there are, the longer analysis will take, especially with all the other factors involved. You can also have multiple lists with each list containing a number of symbols, so keep that in mind as well as it all adds up.