Tools of the Trade for Systematic Investors

Backtesting and Trade Automation Simplified

When it comes to systematic investing tools, I admit—I’m biased. After all, I built QuantMage to perfectly match my own investment needs. But QuantMage isn’t the only player in town. Today, let’s explore a few other notable tools you might want to consider, especially those designed for daily trading strategies based on market close prices, and which provide intuitive no-code or low-code strategy editors.

Composer

Composer was my gateway into systematic investing. Its sleek app and polished user interface stand out, and it’s integrated as a broker, meaning there’s no hassle with external accounts. That said, it inspired QuantMage precisely because some basic features—like logical operators, log-scale charts, and ticker find-and-replace—were (and surprisingly still are after two years!) missing. Composer now supports crypto and even “hybrid” strategies mixing stocks and crypto, though I’m skeptical about this hybrid approach. Combining a 24/7 crypto market with stock market constraints (settlement delays, market holidays) seems inherently tricky.

Portfolio Visualizer

Portfolio Visualizer is beloved by the Boglehead crowd, and it’s great for asset allocation backtests and optimization. It also handles some tactical asset allocation strategies. Recently, they updated the app interface, sparking some controversy, but the trusty old version remains available at legacy.portfoliovisualizer.com—at least for now. Just keep in mind it doesn’t support trade automation.

testfol.io

This has quickly risen as a popular free alternative to Portfolio Visualizer, especially useful for its leverage simulation and extensive synthetic tickers that significantly lengthen backtesting windows. They recently added tactical allocation support using a handful of technical indicators, a welcome upgrade. However, testfol.io also lacks automated trading.

AlgoVue

AlgoVue appeared to be a cheap Composer clone when I began working on QuantMage. It had an nice feature like control flow visualization, though, which Composer still hasn’t implemented. AlgoVue seems to have been abandoned given no updates since. Also not a web app and Windows only.

TrendTrader

TrendTrader is a fresh entrant currently in beta. Its strategy editor utilizes a flow-diagram approach, making strategies visually intuitive. It doesn’t seem to support some sophisticated features like “subspells” yet. It does offer automation through Alpaca. The reliability of its live trading remains an open question, however.

Honorable Mentions

Here's a quick alphabetical rundown of a few other noteworthy players:

• BreakingEquity

• Capitalise.ai

• Monoquant

• NexusTrade

• StrategixTrading

• Surmount

• Wealth-Lab

These tools come with varying degrees of flexibility, sophistication, and maturity. Some cater to multiple trading frequencies including intraday. My personal experience with these is limited, though.

This list is far from exhaustive. I’m sure plenty of hidden gems and lesser-known tools are out there. Remember, the devil really is in the details, particularly with precise backtesting and reliable automation, so always dig deep and do your homework before putting real money on the line.

Ultimately, I believe tools play second fiddle to consistency and discipline. You’ve heard the saying, “Plan your trade, and trade your plan.” Backtesting helps tremendously with the “planning” part, and automation can bolster your trading discipline—but only if you let it. After all, automation can’t save you if you constantly second-guess or prematurely tweak strategies in response to market noise.

What are your favorite systematic investing tools? Found any hidden treasures? Or maybe you’re the script/spreadsheet wizard type, building your own strategies from scratch? I’d love to hear about your go-to tools of the trade!