StrategyQuant enables anyone to create their very own unique automated trading strategies without needing any specific programming skills. Whatever your previous coding experience is, the StrategyQuant user-friendly drag and drop style interface allows you to build complex algorithmic strategies that otherwise you would not have been able to as it would have required programming expertise and many lines of code. This is one of the most intuitive and easy to use auto trading strategy builders that I have come across during my many years in the forex industry. In fact, I have even used it to experiment with automating my own forex strategies. If you are interested in developing your own trading robots but have limited coding experience, hopefully this StrategyQuant Review can help you decide if it is a suitable solution for your needs. Now without further ado, lets get right into it!
What is the StrategyQuant software?
StrategyQuant X is certainly one of the most powerful platforms which can be used to quickly and easily create, develop, publish and research algorithmic trading strategies at just the click of a button. The built-in artificial intelligence allows you to be up to 1000x faster in developing your automatic trading systems.
It has an extremely intuitive interface that is very user-friendly, making it accessible to traders of all experience levels. Via this software, anyone can become an algo trader with no programming skills necessary.
- Use machine learning to build an unlimited number of automated strategies
- Develop trading robots for any instrument and timeframe, including multi-market
- Run fully automated robustness tests to tackle the dangers of curve-fitting
- Export your trading strategies including source code into platforms such as MT4/5, JForex, MultiCharts or TradeStation
- Quickly & easily develop or edit strategies using the intuitive no-code AlgoWizard editor
- Optimize your automated trading strategies with the built-in Walk-Forward optimizer
- Unparalleled set of features with no programming skills required
- Build your own trading portfolios of algo strategies
- Support and educational materials provided
StrategyQuant X is used by thousands of users from all over the world since it was first released back in 2005. Since then, it has grown into one the market leading platforms for developing trading robots, with a plethora of unique and innovative features being added over the years.
It is under continuous development, with new features and functionalities being added on a frequent basis in order to further improve its already diverse range of capabilities.
StrategyQuant Features
The StrategyQuant X software gives users convenient access to the trading tools that are more commonly available to professional quants and hedge funds. This way, you can choose to build your own portfolio of automated trading strategies in a quantified way – hence the name.
Among some of the most prominent StrategyQuant X features are the following:
No complex coding or difficult programming languages required
StrategyQuant implement the classic point and click style interface which makes it a breeze for anyone to understand. All of the complex programming is conducted behind the scenes. You simply choose the blocks you would like to use in your auto trading strategy and StrategyQuant will generate the complete source code for you.
Quick and easy no stress development
Let’s face it, programming can at times prove to be not only boring but also stressful. When that piece of code just does not want to compile and throws out random errors, it can get frustrating – even for the most experienced of computer programmers. StrategyQuant handles all of this for you which means less wasted energy, lower stress levels and automated decision making, 24/7.
Fully customizable
The StrategyQuant X software comes with many features and settings that can all be customised according to your own individual requirements. Whether you are looking for a basic moving average crossover strategy or a more complex grid trading strategy, StrategyQuant can be extended with custom indicators, strategy templates and workflows. If you can think it up a trading strategy in your mind, it is likely you can create an automated version of it with this software.
Multiple financial markets & timeframes
A good trading strategy in my opinion, is one that can work on different trading instruments and chart timeframes. For me, the more consistent it is across different markets and conditions, the more reliable I may deem it to be.
StrategyQuant lets us develop and test our trading strategies on multiple markets and multiple timeframes without needing to generate source code time and time again.
Validating a trading system on different instruments and chart timeframes can be a good way to try and ensure that it is not over optimised to fit within a specific data set but rather has an entry and exit based on solid foundations, rather than sheer coincidence.
We can generate strategies that look at multiple charts – for example, a strategy can trade on the H4 timeframe whilst simultaneously looking for confirmation of signals on the daily and weekly timeframes.
Furthermore, we could set a strategy to trade on the EUR/USD currency pair but also check indicators output or price data on the GBP/USD and USD/JPY charts. You can even configure how many signals should be generated for each chart, along with what the individual properties should be.
Automated robustness testing
As we mentioned above, curve fitting trading strategies by testing random combinations of input settings can often lead to failure. Why? Because that way we would more or less be building a system around the historical data rather than building a system based on logic.
Anyone could create a basic automated system using random indicators and optimise millions of different input parameter combinations to find something that fits the data nicely. Problem is, that is past data and it may have no relevance to the markets moving forward at all. You will often see trading robots that have back tests with beautiful equity curves upwards, but always seem to lose in reality. This can often be due to over optimisation.
Of course, there are other factors that can play a part such as market conditions and the brokers trading environment, but generally we wouldn’t want to over optimise.
Thankfully, StrategyQuant can help to try and avoid this as it supports automatic overfitting to make sure that your strategies are robust and actually have a real edge on the market, rather than relying on cure-fitting over past data.
Always keep in mind, when back testing any trading strategy with StrategyQuant or any other software for that matter, the results are only based on historical data. They are by no means any indication of future results. You should always have a clear understanding of the significant risks involved with trading online and never ever risk more than you can afford to lose.
Integrated free data downloads
When you have developed an automated trading strategy, you will need historical data to test it on. This used to involve a complex process of download huge data files from brokers before having to convert and import them into trading platforms from where you would run the back tests.
Thankfully, things have moved on since then and are a lot more convenient. You can get integrated free high-quality data download for forex (Dukascopy, Darwinex), crypto (various exchanges such as Binance) and stocks (Yahoo Finance). This means that right of the bat, there is no need for any external tools or painstaking processes to use the historical data for back testing. If you require data for futures and equities, there is an optional data subscription.
Quality back testing
Back testing is an integral part of developing an automated trading system in my opinion. It is very frustrating when you see a commercial forex robot that has an overly long sales page waffling on about a new scientific system based on non-existent patented technology but they don’t even have back tests for us to see historical results let alone real verified Myfxbook accounts. For me, I would avoid these like the plague.
If we don’t have a back test, it could mean the developer does not want to show them because they look so bad or perhaps just as bad, they don’t have the knowledge to conduct a quality back test.
With the implemented StrategyQuant back tester, you can test your developed trading robots over different instruments and timeframes, in order to test ideas, find suitable settings and verify the strategy.
You can also use the free StrategyQuant tool QuantDataManager to download, analyse, import and export, tick by tick data from various financial markets including forex, stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies, indices, metals, etc. This data can then be used for high accuracy back tests in a platform of your choice.
StrategyQuant utilises a rapid back testing engine that has real tick precision which is capable of making make thousands of back tests per second – depending on your data and test precision. This allows the StrategyQuant X software to generate and review tens of thousands of strategies per hour.
Interestingly, the StrategyQuant back-testing engine was developed to not only match the same back tests that would traditionally be done within trading platform, but also do to so at a faster rate. For me, this is a stand out feature that can save a lot of hassle from messing around within downloading and importing into MetaTrader.
No coding skills required
I am sure there are many aspiring algo-traders out there who are reading this and looking fr a solution to create a trading robot without needing to study coding. Well, you will be pleased to heat that StrategyQuant X uses a no-code approach. You do not need any specialised programming skills to start developing and testing algorithmic trading strategies. Anyone can now build basic or complex algo strategies by clicking just a few buttons.
Technical indicators included
There are thousands of technical indicators that can be used to conduct various different forms of technical analysis on the financial markets. You may want to develop an automated system that uses just one indicator, a few or maybe a large combination for additional confirmation.
StrategyQuant supports all of the standard technical indicators such as the moving average envelopes, Bollinger bands, relative strength index, stochastics, MACD and much more. It also supports different candlestick patterns, 4 types of trade entries and 6 types of exits, and the list is growing on a continuous basis.
Custom indicators supported
If the forms of market analysis included are not already enough for you, you can easily extend the StrategyQuant collection with your own custom indicators or building blocks – both visually in the AlgoWizard editor using custom blocks or by making your own code snippet.
Export to trading platforms
Once the simple process to develop your own trading robot is complete, you can generate the source code to use on a trading platform of your choice, including MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 (hedging and netting mode), JForex from Dukascopy, TradeStation and MultiCharts. Everything is included so you have access to the complete code.
Portfolio support
With the multiple portfolio feature, you can simulate portfolios trading by grouping together multiple strategies that you have created into a single portfolio.
Fit to portfolio
This is another unique StrategyQuant functionality that allows you to find strategies that could complement your existing portfolio which are not actually correlated with the existing strategies that you have developed.
Improve strategies
You can look for way in which to improve your existing strategies or certain parts of them by using the same build process based on machine learning. Machine learning is the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience and by the use of data. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Retesting and optimizing mode
StrategyQuant is capable of retesting or optimizing existing strategies on different markets, with different settings, and it can even re-run all of the allocated robustness tests that are set for them.
Chart display
If we are creating an automated strategy, we are going to want to visually check the entries and exits on a chart to make sure that it is working correctly. The software makes this process simple by giving us the option to display a candlestick chart including all of the indicators used by the strategy and showing the trades as they were filled.
Out of sample periods
StrategyQuant supports an unlimited number of Out of Sample periods for extra robustness testing. We can perform advanced filtering based on results in each Out of Sample period separately.
Display profit/loss
During testing, the maximum open profit/loss or daily equity are automatically computed and displayed in an equity chart. This makes it easy to identify theoretical performance and identify areas of possible improvements.
Identify bugs
One of the most infuriating parts of computer programming are the bugs that can appear if there is a mistake within the code. These can take hours if not days to try and solve. Developers need to try numerous solutions, ask for help online and sometimes, just hope for the best!
To make bug squashing easier, StrategyQuant can automatically detect some of the common flaws and will report them for every strategy that you generate to try and help you identify and remove them from impacted strategies.
Integrated with other tools
The StrategyQuant team don’t just offer the impressive StrategyQuant X software. They have other trading tool that it can integrate seamlessly with, including QuantAnalyzer, QuantDataManager and AlgoWizard. This diverse combination of trading tools covers some of the most important aspects of strategy generation, trading and tracking.
Who is the StrategyQuant software for?
The StrategyQuant X software is an excellent solution for anyone who already has a manual trading strategy that they wish to automate. It can also be a great way to experiment with different trading strategies to see how they perform when fully automated.
For instance, you could easily create hundreds of automated systems and back test them in the MetaTrader strategy tester to get a rough idea how they may have performed over historical data.
StrategyQuant X can be used to develop private forex robots or even for developers who want to create a free forex robot or commercial paid expert advisor for other traders to try out.
How does the StrategyQuant software work?
StrategyQuant X runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Windows Servers. You simply download and install it as you would any other software application. From there, you can launch the software and follow the step by step instructions to create your own automated trading robots.
There is a large selection of tutorial videos and guides available on the StrategyQuant X website that make it easier to understand and use. You can go through them at your own pace, practising with the software as you go along, until you become familiar with how it works and all of the different capabilities that it has.
The StrategyQuant support team are also on hand to help you with any questions that you may have. They are very friendly and can easily be reached via email and/or Skype.
How to build an automated system in StrategyQuant X?
Now that you should have a clear understand of what StrategyQuant X is and what it can do for you, let’s take a look at the process that it uses to find trading strategies with a real edge:
- The build process – this is the point at which the StrategyQuant software uses machine learning techniques and genetic programming to automatically generate new trading robots for any trading instrument and chart timeframe.
- Strategy quality testing – at this stage, we want to test the strategy robustness to avoid over fitting. The StrategyQuant software uses multiple advanced techniques to help ensure that all of your developed strategies are as robust as they can be and have a market edge. It is capable of advanced robustness techniques such as Monte Carlo simulations, Walk-Forward Optimizations / Matrix, System Parameter Permutations, Optimization Profile, What-If simulations can even be applied automatically as a part of the building process.
- Generate code – Once the strategy has been developed and its robustness tested, you can generate source code for a variety of trading platforms to test on demo or live trading accounts. You can just load and import the strategy to your trading platform of choice and attach the trading robot onto your preferred trading symbols and timeframes.
- Build your own portfolio – Previously, you may have had to rely on another service to pick and choose portfolios for you. StrategyQuant lets you develop and build your own trading portfolio of diverse algo strategies on multiple assets and timeframes that are unique to your own individual trading preferences and goals.
What are the advantages if the StrategyQuant X software?
Well, it goes without saying that the main advantage of the software is that anyone can create an automated trading system without any programming skills. Here are some other reasons as to why StrategyQuant is used by traders all over the globe:
- Quantified trading – Due to having in-depth research capabilities and robustness tools, you can find trading strategies that are statistically sound, based on a verifiable alpha / edge over the market.
- Help to reduce human errors when trading – Algorithmic strategies remove the human element as they trade automatically on behalf the user. Thus, they tend not to make obvious mistakes and are not influenced by poor trading psychology and negative emotions such as fear, anger and greed. That being said, there are some disadvantages to automated system. This includes the fact they may not be aware of an upcoming news event that could have a significant impact on the market volatility. They can also develop bugs and potentially crash. Just make sure you are aware of all the risks trading with any manual or automated system.
- Better productivity – When you are creating automated systems with a rapid workflow, you can develop and test as many trading strategies as you wish on a daily basis. Effectively, the software program is doing all of the work for you, which allows you to have more time to do the other things that you enjoy.
- Innovative & advanced features – StrategyQuant has an abundance of unique features that some other trading robot building software’s do not have. This includes powerful robustness tests, fully configurable build workflows, fully customizable strategy templates and more.
StrategyQuant X Packages & Pricing
There are a few StrategyQuant X packages that you can choose from. Payment can be made in 12-monthly instalments or you can make a onetime payment upfront to save 12% on the overall cost.
Your StrategyQuant licence will be delivered to you by email immediately after purchase. You can cancel your subscription anytime.
Please keep in mind that because they offer a fully functional trial version, they don’t provide refunds. You can consider trying the free trial before purchase.
If you own a full license, they can give you a Starter license for a second computer upon request. You can also upgrade your StrategyQuant package at any time.
The StrategyQuant X packages and prices are as follows:
StrategyQuant X Ultimate
This package is designed for those who want to start a trading business with lifetime access to the all premium features.
The top of the range package has the following features:
- Builder, Retester, Improver but without advanced robustness tests, Optimizer or custom workflow.
- E-book with step-by-step guides, Algotrading video course (56 lessons)
- Lifetime equities and futures data pack
- Advanced robustness tests, Optimizer (Simple + Walk-forward), Custom projects (custom workflow), strategy templates, 8 strategies to start
- StrategyQuant for Business (MQL Market support), Access to premium modules
- Lifetime support and upgrades
- $245 with 12-monthly instalments
- $2,900 onetime payment
StrategyQuant X Professional
This package is designed for those who want the professional trading aspects but are not currently at the point where they require all of the premium features.
This package has the following features:
- Builder, Retester, Improver but without advanced robustness tests, Optimizer or custom workflow.
- E-book with step-by-step guides, Algotrading video course (56 lessons)
- 3-months equities and futures data pack
- Advanced robustness tests, Optimizer (Simple + Walk-forward), Custom projects (custom workflow), strategy templates, 8 strategies to start
- 1-year support and upgrades
- $125 with 12-monthly instalments
- $1,490 onetime payment
StrategyQuant X Starter
This package is designed for those who are just dipping their toes into the world of algorithmic trading and are not quite sure if it is for them.
This package has the following features:
- Builder, Retester, Improver but without advanced robustness tests, Optimizer or custom workflow.
- E-book with step-by-step guides, Algotrading video course (56 lessons)
- 1-year support and upgrades
- $105 with 12-monthly instalments
- $1,290 onetime payment
Free Trial
There is a no strings attached 14-day trial if you wish to try out the StrategyQuant software to see if it is the right solution for your needs. You can cancel at any time with no prior commitment needed.
StrategyQuant X Conclusion
Putting it all together, StrategyQuant X provides a great way to develop automated strategies using machine learning, back testing, robustness testing, filtering, optimization, edge verification and much more. The software makes it easy to build a portfolio of non-correlated diverse strategies that trade on multiple markets and/or timeframes.
In my humble opinion, this software is a market leader when it comes to a user-friendly way of building automated trading systems without programming expertise. It can literally save the user from the years of study and practice it takes to master a programming language. In fact, I am not sure there is any quicker or easier way to develop and test a manual trading strategy as an automated one.
If you have made it this far then congratulations! It must mean that you have a serious interest in creating your own trading robots and this may just be the tool for you. If you would like to find out more, please feel free to visit the StrategyQuant website by using the link below.
StrategyQuant
Free Trial
Pros
- Develop trading robots
- User-friendly interface
- Custom trading portfolios
- Back testing capabilities
- Robustness testing
- Multiple markets & chart timeframes
- Tick data included
- No coding skills required
- Packed with features
- Full support & detailed instructions included
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Some limited functionality
- Limited features on free version
Self-confessed Forex Geek spending my days researching and testing everything forex related. I have many years of experience in the forex industry having reviewed thousands of forex robots, brokers, strategies, courses and more. I share my knowledge with you for free to help you learn more about the crazy world of forex trading! Read more about me.
