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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) |
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General
Licensing & Billing
Technical - General architecture
General
- What is a trading system?
A trading system is simply a set of logical rules that buy and sell a tradable asset such as a stock. Typically, these logic rules are expressed in a form that a computer can understand therefore allowing the computer to test the rules using historical data. This process is called backtesting.
The logical rules that make up a trading system can come in many forms, with a popular methodology based upon technical analysis.
For more information on technical analysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis
- What is Seer?
Seer is an software application that allows you to build and backtest your own trading system.
- Is Seer easy to learn?
Seer has been designed to be as easy to use and learn as possible but to some extent it really depends on your existing experience of technical analysis. If you have used other technical analysis software packages then you'll find the switch to Seer straightforward. Have a look at the moving average crossover trading system example.
- What does "Seer Developer Intra-Day" mean?
Seer developer is a software application that contains all the components needed to build, backtest, optimize and deploy a trading system operating at the Intra-Day time frame.
Seer supports time frames from 1 second to weeks, allowing you to define your own time frame. Popular time frames such as 1, 5, 15, 20, 30, hour, day and month bars are pre-defined.
- Is there a real-time version of Seer Developer?
Yes, although it is currently in beta-testing. We will be supporting a variety of data-feed vendors and brokerages.
- Where does the data come from that Seer uses? Can I use my own data?
The data can come from a variety of sources. Seer includes a data fetcher for Yahoo that can fetch free End of Day (EOD) data for most of the worlds markets. Seer can also import most ASCII based data formats should you have your own data.
Once data has been imported it is stored in a repository we call a datastore. This datastore is a flat file binary database that Seer uses to access bar data. The datastore can be moved within your file system (and can work from networked drives), but can't be manually edited.
- How does the Yahoo data fetch work?
Free end of day data is provided by the Yahoo finance site and Seer is able to fetch this data via your internet connection. Seer will also adjust for stock splits.
- Does Seer contain spyware, adware or any form of malware?
No, and it never will do.
Licensing & Billing
- Why the subscription model? How does it work?
Beyond the free trial period of Seer you have to pay a monthly fee to continue to use the application. The minimum period is a single month.
You can choose to join the subscription service where your monthly fee is debited automatically at the end of the billing period, or you can choose to pay manually (on a manual basis).
Without the monthly subscription model we would have to charge significantly more for a software licence.
- How do I pay? Is it safe?
You can pay via debit or credit card, in one of three currencies - the United States Dollar (USD), the Euro (EUR) and in Pounds Sterling (GBP). We use PayPal (www.paypal.com) as our Payment provider, one of the worlds largest payment systems.
Yes, it is safe. Paypal use full encryption on their site, and they do not share your payment details (such as card number) with us. For more details see PayPal.
- How do I cancel?
If you have signed up for the subscription service you can cancel at any time for any reason. The subscription system is controlled via PayPal, and the cancellation is done through their system. If you have forgotten your PayPal details, we can also cancel your subscription, in which case please contact support. In both cases make sure you cancel before the next billing cycle as we can't refund partial months. Once you have cancelled your subscription Seer will continue to work until the end of the payment period.
- Do I have to pay for updates or new releases?
No. You always have access to the latest version of Seer.
- Can I use Seer on a laptop and a desktop at the same time?
Yes. Each Seer licence allows you to run Seer concurrently on two machines. Contact Support and we'll send you an additional registration key.
- What happens if I buy a new computer or reinstall windows do I have to buy another licence?
No. Although the Seer licence is tided to a specific machine, you are free to move that licence to a different machine should you need or choose to do so. Contact support. If you have a Seer login for My Seer you are also able to change your licence details at any time.
- Do I have to pay sales tax (VAT)?
It depends on your location and status. If you are based outside of the European Economic area, then you do not need to pay sales tax (VAT). If you are based within the United Kingdom you will have to pay sales tax (VAT). If you are based outside of the UK, but within the European Economic area you have to pay sales tax (VAT) unless you can supply a national VAT number.
Technical - General architecture
- What is the base of Seer's scripting language?
Seer embeds a Perl interpreter, and exposes it's functionality.
- Why not Python, PHP, Ruby, .Net, Java or any other language?
Any development environment that supports the building and backtesting of trading systems has to deal with time series data and the challenges of how to represent this data internally as well as making it easy for the end user to manipulate, process and view the data. Typically there are two choices available: to retro-fit an existing language or to design a new language from scratch. There are pros and cons to both options, but we felt it was better to use an existing language as it provides an optimal functionality set.
Perl is well suited to be used as a base for a trading system language, as it's syntax is flexible enough to cope with the demands of storing and processing time series data while being easily embedded into other environments. The end result is that 90% of trading systems written within Seer would not use major Perlisms with the syntax being familiar (if not identical in some cases) to the above languages. Should you need, or wish to use the full power of the Perl language for your trading, then you are free to do so.
- How is Seer so fast?
This is a complex question, and there is no simple answer. From a project perspective, performance was one of the key requirements for the Seer toolset and this requirement has filtered down through all aspects of Seer's design.
Perhaps, the simple answer is that the of core of Seer has been written in ANSI C with all internal structures being C based. This as you would expect has a significant impact on performance. The Perl programming language it's self is no slouch, with a popular Perl moral being:
"You can sometimes write faster code in C, but you can always write code faster in Perl. Because you can use each from the other, combine them as you wish."
As almost all of the hundreds of functions that Seer provides through the Perl environment are written in C, you get the benefit of a highly optimized core for performance but with a simple and flexible scripting environment to build trading systems.
- Is Seer available on Linux?
Seer is not currently available on Linux for private users, only for institutional use.
The current Linux versions run via the command line or as a daemon (no GUI, but suitable for clustering), The Linux version maintains 100% compatibility with trading systems developed on the Win32 versions of Seer.
- Can Seer take advantage of multi-core processors?
Yes and no. In the real-time version of Seer, each major component runs in a separate thread. Each Seer account also run's in a separate thread and there can be more than one Seer account running concurrently from the same data feed. In this situation, Seer can take advantage of multi-core technology.
In the case of backtesting a trading system only a single thread is used. We are working on a version of the optimizer than can run in more than one thread which would take advantage of multi-core technology.
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features & benefits
