See the following image: This would be EXTREMELY useful for 'accelerated real time backtesting' and people learning to read charts and pick buy/sell signals when testing their systems. You can load a bar at a time, but it is very cumbersome as you have to keep opening up the X-Axis Properties and changing the dates loaded. I want these buttons on the toolbar so I can just click once to load another bar or unload another bar. These buttons should also be configurable as to how many bars they load/unload. There are 'Load Next Bar/Tick' and 'Unload Current Bar/Tick' buttons. The same for a week or day of ticks. There is a 'Load All' button and an 'Unload All' (except for the very first date/tick) button as well so you can 'step' right through the history of a stock, bar by bar, seeing how you would have done. There should also be an 'Auto-Load' that loads one bar or one week of bars or one day of real-time ticks (e.g.) automatically, say, per second. The Auto-Load speed would be configurable. There would be a Pause and/or Stop button to go with this. Can you see Metastock all of a sudden being used for stock market training all around the world?! Advanced Get has this functionality, and it can also plot in the future. BUT, to any unwary forum readers, AG does NOT have a formula language, and nor do they plan to add it!! Do NOT jump ship, PLEASE! You have already spent your money. Let's just make what we've got the BEST by contributing...anyway. Is this making sense? Why would this be good? Because some functions don't work with system tests, e.g. lastvalue, zigzag, peak, trough... It would give you the ability to 'see under the hood' of your test. Don't get me wrong, system tests are great, but at some point you still have to learn to look at a chart and recognise patterns. Come on Version 10!!! SteveD

...or writing your own black box! 8) By the way, Patrick, the buttons I drew were just examples of button images, but I drew a circle, which to most of us means 'record'. Now after some more thought, I have decided what the 'Record' button should do... So I think I have settled on the complete list of buttons to include. To reiterate what they are: :!: Load Next Bar/Tick - (1-Minute/5-Minute/.../Daily/Weekly/Monthy etc.); :!: Unload Current Bar/Tick; :!: Load Next 5 Bars - (number configurable, or could be 'Week', e.g.); :!: Unload Last 5 Bars/Week etc.; :!: Load To Last - note that this doesn't mean 'from the first'; :!: Load to First - loads all data from the current to the very first available record. this doesn't append to the end/current; :!: Load All - this DOES include ALL data available in the database, from start to end; :!: Unload All (Except First Bar/Tick); :!: Play Bars/Ticks - (configurable rate/sec - loads bars/ticks continuously until latest available); :!: Rewind Bars/Ticks - (continuously unloads bars/tick until first available bar/tick); :!: Stop - we would obviously need this; :!: Pause - we would need this really for use in conjunction with the last button below... - and now for the star of the show - :!: :!: :!: Record - THIS WOULD ACTUALLY END UP BEING THE MOST USEFUL, IMPORTANT, CRUCIAL AND FUN button to use :!: :!: :!: To set up the Recording session, you would first specify your brokerage rates, account size, shares per trade or account percent per trade, the SPEED or RATE at which Metastock would load bars/ticks (you can't stop time in real life!) and how Metastock would incorporate Slippage. The default Slippage should be that when you click Sell, the LOWEST value from the following should be picked: :arrow: the next bars Low or the next tick (if plotting real time ticks), :arrow: the current bars Low minus 'X' percent or points (specifiy which will be used). When Buy is clicked, the Slippage should be incorporated by choosing the HIGHEST of the following values: :arrow: the next bars High or the next tick, :arrow: the current bars High plus 'X' % or points. :idea: Record - when Record is pressed, it should start loading bars/ticks in the same way that the Play button does, BUT there would also be a 'Buy' and a 'Sell' button. When in record mode, as the data is loading, one bar or tick at a time, you press the Buy and Sell buttons to simulate your trades. Metastock then saves these Buys and Sells generated by you clicking 'Buy' or 'Sell' and saves those signals for review after you have finished. Results would be saved and viewable in just the same way as from the Sytem Tester. This allows you to PRACTICE TRADING like you have NEVER been able to before... The Pause button would be useful with Record because you could pause the loading of bars or ticks and the recording of Buys and Sells WITHOUT closing or completing the Interactive Test recording session. That is, pressing Pause again would resume the same session and would continue to save your Buy and Sell signals into the same Interactive Test report...because you might want to turn the oven off... Whether the buttons would load/unload 1 tick, bar, day, week, month etc. would depend on the current periodicity of the chart. The buttons should automatically change accordingly. We would set default values for what each would be worth for different periodicity settings. Also, the 'syntax' or function of the buttons should be something like: "(Un)Load X Ticks/Bars/Days/Weeks" - I.E. "[action] [number (quantity)] [data time block (quality)]" E.G. "Load 1 Ticks" - intraday chart; "Unload 5 Days" - linked to timeline, regardless of periodicty; "Unload 5 Bars" - linked to periodicity. If daily, then 5 days, if weekly, then 5 weeks, if 5-minute, then 25 minutes...etc.; "Load 2 Months"; "Load All"; I think that is pretty much it... I am a visionary, can you see the picture I am trying to paint?! Do you know how GOOD this would be :!: ...I can see a whole new way of learning to trade...a whole new multitude of traders entering the market, needing data...a whole new list of training courses...a whole new reason for and way of marketing Metastock...a whole new class of Metastock users... I want to test this...I think this is a good enough idea to warrant...a few upgrades maybe? Patrick/Marilyn, Have I made this clear and understandable? I believe that this could be sent straight to the coders as a spec to work to. It's 4:05am Monday morning as I type this...why am I still up? BECAUSE THIS EXCITES ME!!! I hope you can catch the potential of this idea and help push this. Can you please let me know if anything is done? Kind Regards, SteveD/skeetabomb

This is an example of some play buttons... Thanks for your help, Patrick. SteveD.

Whadda Ya think?

The System Tester is useful, but real experience at picking patterns and recognising indicator signals comes only with eyeballing charts. When those charts are EOD, you have to wait 24hrs for the next bar :x . Imagine being able to just go back into the past and do an 'accelerated real time' manual test - this will test if you can apply the system test optimised formulae in a real trading scenario 8) without having to wait 24 hrs for each bar to load...the most effective training :lol: . Cheers. :mrgreen: