Help for Basket Design page

Contents
1. Basket Design Control Panel 2. Action buttons 3. Basket Contents display 4. Preferences 5. Creating a Customized basket 6. Using your new basket

1. Basket Design Control Panel

The Basket Design page contains the Basket Design Control Panel, shown below, which you use to create your own personal baskets. This control panel contains a Basket selection drop-down list, which works the same way as the one on the Results page. It also contains a number of Action buttons that you use to Show and Include existing baskets, which is the first step in creating a new basket. And it contains the SaveAs button that you use to save your new basket. The Preferences let you specify settings to be saved with your basket: the sort order for tabular displays, the scaling, and default settings for charts.

When the Basket Design page is first displayed, brief instructions are given below the control panel, and the only action you are able to perform is to Show a basket. Accordingly, most choices are disabled (and displayed in gray). After you have Shown a basket, the "Include" function is enabled, and if you are logged in then the "Save", "Delete", and "SaveAs" buttons will also be enabled.

2. Action buttons

There are five action buttons that you can click (Show, Include, Save, Delete, or SaveAs), and a text area for entering the name of a new (SaveAs) basket. These work in conjunction with the drop-down list of basket names, which is essentially the same as the one on the Results page. The role of these buttons in creating a new basket is outlined here. Further detail is given below in Creating a Customized basket.

• The first operation that must be done is to Show a basket. Do this by selecting a basket from the Basket list, and clicking "Show". This will produce the Summary Results display which lists information for each component in the basket. See the "Summary Results" help page for details.
• You can then Include additional baskets, to obtain additional components for your new basket.
• A number of Predefined baskets are available in the drop-down list. The name of a predefined basket begins with "*", and their contents cannot be modified. Predefined baskets include:
  • *All Current Actuals, which contains all the Actual results that we track.
  • *All Current Actuals & Hypotheticals, which contains all the results that we track, both Hypothetical and Actual.
  • *Basket Totals, which contains the totals for some predefined baskets and any user-defined baskets.
• Use the SaveAs button to save your new basket, after you have selected the desired components.
• Use the Save button to re-save a basket after you have made changes to it.
• Use the Delete button to delete a basket that you no longer need. (It will be renamed "Deleted", so you will still have access to it.)

3. Basket Contents display

When you Show and Include baskets, the resulting components are shown in Summary Results format as shown below. This display is similar to the Summary display shown on the Results page. However, the display shown here has additional capabilities to let you modify the contents etc. of the basket:

• The Select column is provided, where you select which components will be included in your basket.
• In the Weight column, you can modify the weight of each component. This determines how much the component will contribute toward the basket total.
• You can modify the Account Size for the basket, which is used when percentages are calculated for the basket total. This is called the User account size, and cannot be smaller than half the weighted Vendor account sizes, or larger than double the weighted Conservative account sizes. Otherwise the value will default to the weighted sum of the Conservative account sizes. You may wish to use a different account size, for example if the combination of components produces a particularly smooth hypothetical equity curve. In this case you might try a smaller account size to see what effect this has on the percentage profit-or-loss and drawdown numbers, and on the Figure of Merit, etc. The system will automatically calculate these numbers for the basket total.

Note that this display allows you to launch a chart of any component. This can be helpful when deciding which components you want to include in your basket, because a component whose summary results look good may have an equity curve that does not look good.

Summary Results for basket= *Robs Combo Actual                       Help for this display     FuturesExaminer.com
Select	Component Name: System-Contract-Data (or Basket)	Account size $K: (Vendor) Conservative	Weight	Months of data /gap	Drawdown in %: eoDay > eoMonth, Current	Average trades /year	Long-term, One-year data:			Chart
							Average $Profit-or-Loss /trade	Profit or Loss: average %/year	Figure of Merit
	Compass-SP-Actual	(30) 50		71	51>53,0	106	$118, $222	25, 47	22, 56
	RMesa5-SP-Actual	(30) 50		43	38>41,41	125	$27, $126	7, 31	4, 0
Bsk Total	*Robs Combo Actual Account size= (60,100) $K			43	26,14	231	$72, $34	17, 8	12, 6

4. Preferences

You can specify default values for several parameters, as shown in Table 1 below. The values for these parameters are stored with your basket. When you are in the Results page, these values are restored when you first display the basket. You can then change the preferences for subsequent displays if you wish.

Table 1 - Parameters in the Preferences bar
Parameter	Description	Pages Affected
		Summary Results	Statistics	Monthly	Single-Chart	Multi-Chart
Scaling	Determines, for some data items, whether the data is presented in Percent or in Dollars. Percentages are based on Conservative account size, or User account size for basket totals.	-	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Chart Years	Determines how many years of data will be shown on a chart. From 1 to 6 years can be chosen, or "To fit".	-	-	-	Yes	Yes
Chart Reference Line	Determines the slope of the Reference Line displayed on a chart. Note that units of the slope are determined by the Scaling: either Percentage or $K.	-	-	-	Yes	Yes

5. Creating a Customized basket

It is convenient to create a basket in two stages. First, determine the components that you want in the basket, and then specify the details: the component weights, the overall account size, and the preferences. Note that you must first Register and Log In. You can create a basket as follows.

1. Select which components will be in the basket:
   • First, Show a basket that contains most or all of the components that you want.
   • Next, Include additional baskets as necessary, to obtain more components to choose from.
   • Determine which components will be in your basket, by clicking on the check boxes in the "Select" column. Components which have a check mark will be included in your basket.
   • Note that you can view a chart of any component by clicking on the icon in the Chart column. This may help you to decide whether to include a component in your basket or not.
   • You can include the totals of other baskets, but their weight will be fixed at zero so they will not contribute to the total of your basket. But you can compare an included basket's summary information, etc. with your basket, and graph an included basket on a multi-chart.
   When you are satisfied with your selections, you can save the basket to capture this basic information prior to specifying the details. This is done by (1) Typing the name of the basket in the SaveAs Name text box; and (2) Clicking the "SaveAs" button. Your basket will be saved, and the Summary Results for these components will be displayed. Note that the Basket Total is calculated automatically, and the User account size may be set automatically.

 
2. Specify the details:
   • Specify the weight for each component. This is done by simply typing the value into the "Weight" column for a component. Weights must be between 0 and 10 in steps of 0.1. The weight determines the contribution that the component will make to the basket total. Enter zero if you wish the component to be displayed but not contribute to the basket total. As an example, you may have a basket that contains two components, one with $50K account size and the other with only $10K account size, and you want the components to contribute equally to the basket total. This could be done by keeping the default weight = 1 for the $50K component, and entering a weight of 5 for the $10K component.
   • Specify the overall account size for the basket. This is done by entering a value in the Total $KAct field in the bottom row. This User account size value will be used for percentage calculations of basket totals. The minimum value is 0.5 * the weighted total of vendor account sizes, and the maximum is 2 * the weighted total of conservative account sizes. As a guide, the weighted Vendor (in brackets) and Conservative account sizes are shown in the corresponding "Name" column just to the left. If your basket has a low drawdown, you might want to try a smaller account size.
   • Modify any Preferences that you wish. Please refer to Table 1 above for a list of the Preferences and the pages that they affect.


3. You can Modify your basket to add or remove components, or to change any of its parameters.
   • First, Show the basket that you want to modify.
   • Add components by Including additional basket(s) that contain the desired components, and clicking in the Select column for the ones that you want.
   • Remove unwanted components by clicking in the Select column to unselect them.
   • Modify the Weights, User account size, and preferences as desired.
   • Save your changes by clicking the "Save" button. Again, the Basket Total will be calculated automatically.

6. Using your new basket

While you are creating a new basket, the Summary Results are displayed in the Basket Design page itself. But to examine your basket in other ways, you must go to the Results page. This can be done by simply clicking the Results link at the top of the Basket Design page.

The Results page allows you to display the Summary Results display again, but with a Multi-Chart column that allows you to launch a Multi-chart of selected components. The multi-chart is a powerful way to compare results from different systems. The Results page also allows you to view the Monthly and Statistics displays, which provide additional data that complements the data provided in the Summary Results display.

  Page last updated 2006-Jan-14

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