OK, I'm a Metastock newbie and still going through the manuals. But this is what I tried. 1. Choose The Explorer 2. Choose PS Long Sell Short Sale 5 day (perf) 3. Run it on S&P 100 with 1000 data points from today (I have Reuters Data link package). It gives a list of stocks. The first one is Xerox (look at screen shot enclosed). So, this Perf. system, seems to like Xerox (per manual). Now, I launch SystemTester and feed in the *exact* same parameters 1000-pt data, LSS-5day and choose Points only (rest are default parameters) and run the simulation. I get the below screen which indicates the system did *not* work well against XRX. Why is this? Any ideas? Is there a bug in MS? Thanks!

COMISSION SETTINGS .... There are quite few things that could explain the difference. I forgot how the system was written but I know that the exploration will alwasy miss the first 2 trades ... Also the exploration would be as if you set your system tester to enter at the close with 0 delay ... What was your system tester setting ... Lastly let me say this, the system tester is there to give you an idea of the performance of a system, not the exact amount of money you would have made ... Is the system tester reliable ? I would say yes. When I set my system test with no margin requirements, no comissions, delay of 1 using the open and as a points only test ... Then I do rely on the results Patrick PS : Yes I'm saying you should avoid all the fancy stuff because that is where most people ( Including me, I'm no better :evil: ) get confused and make huge mistakes ...