Optimum Performance

Pairtrade Finder is a powerful program. No other software available crunches the same amount of
data PTF does on the fly. The latest programming technologies have been used to allow this to
happen. However there are limits on the amount of data you can import and back test at any given
time. This largely depends on your computer RAM, chip speed, hard drive speed, internet
connection and how many other programs you have running on your computer.
PTF can store and analyse more data than most trading software programs available. That is because
we use separate 3
rd party software, Microsoft SQL as a database for our data. PTF connects to your
SQL database automatically and updates it minute by minute, and retrieves old data from there for
back testing. Due the volume of data PTF crunches on the fly, you have to be aware of the limitations
involved.
Typically speaking, you should be able to easily store 300 pairs in your home page and back test 20
stocks at once. This is plenty of capability, because you should be creating groups with 20 or less
instruments to make sure there are of high correlation, so create a new group for each industry or
instrument type. With default settings, each pair will produce on average 2.5 trades per year, so with
300 pairs, that is 750 trading signals per year. Some users have powerful PCs and can comfortably
store over 1,000 pairs on their home page and back test 50 or more stocks at once. However if you
find the program crashing during start up or during a back test, it is likely you have loaded too much
data into the software.
We have found the optimum computer setup to be a brand name PC with 8gb of memory, quad core
chip and windows 7 64 bit. This is not required to use PTF, however if you are a serious full time
trader you may consider the above. Anything over 2gb of RAM and more than 1.5ghz of chip speed
should allow you to enjoy PTF functionality without issue.
With regards to setting the update frequency in group settings, be careful using a high frequency like
5 seconds when having more than 200 pairs, by default the update frequency is 300 seconds,
meaning PTF will fetch new data every 5 minutes, you can safely decrease this to 60 seconds with
200 pairs on your home page.