EdgeWare FastBreak Pro Version 6.5 - Manual (Page 23)

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If you want to try Buy and Sell Using Rank, you would check the box and this would
indicate to try that parameter option. Next, FastBreak Pro needs a range of parameters to
try. In the above example, FastBreak will try Buy Ranking parameters between 10 and 95
days, and Sell Ranking parameters between 10 and 95 days.
During optimization
FastBreak Pro will search this range to find the optimum set of parameters. Note: The
first range of text boxes is listed at Parm1 and the second range of boxes as Parm2. In
the case of some ranking strategies, such as simple Rank, Parm1 = Buy period and
Parm2 = Sell period. For other strategies, it will be a little more complicate. To
understand exactly what Parm1 and Parm2 reference for each strategy, go to the
Standard FastBreak Strategy Tab. Select a particular strategy in the pull down menu
and look at the parameter titles in left central part of the screen. For example, for
simple ranking it is the Buy parameter and Sell parameter. The left variable = Parm1
and the variable to its right is Parm2. For ranking strategies that use three variables,
such as GAM and MAM, you will see text box ranges on the optimizer screen that
allow you to insert ranges for this third variable.
You can change the range to values other than the default values. Although the Genetic
Algorithm (GA) is very powerful, there are two advantages to keeping the range small.
First, the GA will converge much faster, thus reducing run time. The other advantage is
that FastBreak Pro tries a fixed number of different values between the minimum and
maximum range. The technical reason for this has to do with the way GA’s work, but the
effect is that to properly sample the range looking for optimum parameters, keep the
range as small as practical. For example, if the ranking range is 6 to 50 days, FastBreak
may only try 32 different values between 6 and 50 days. If a much larger range is used,
then the sampling may be too large. How can you determine a reasonable range? First,
the defaults are a very good starting point. However, if you find that the optimized
parameters FastBreak Pro determines are near the minimum or maximum value of your
range, then this is an indication that the range needs to be extended. In our example
above, if you happen to notice that the best strategies found by FastBreak have Buy or
Sell ranking periods near 50 days, then you would extend the upper range of possible
values and rerun the optimization. Note: If you know the exact values of a parameter
you want to use, then put that value in both the minimum and maximum box. This
will force FastBreak Pro to use only that value.
If you want to force the Sell ranking period to be the same as the Buy ranking period, then
check the following:
This option is explained fully in the standard FastBreak manual.
To indicate to FastBreak Pro which types of curve-fits to try when using Slope, check any
combination of the following boxes: