User Data is data that is put together externally, such as data that was downloaded from a website, or a coefficient created through some external process. Users can put their own data into the trading system, and that data can then be used during backtesting.
Types of user data
- Information for the script, e.g. coefficients
- User streaming events
- User trades for testing exit strategies
Sometimes users have instance variables that change depending on different market conditions that are determined externally. CloudQuant supports the ability to pass in these values at run time. These values are called parameters. For example, say you do an offline calculation to determine the worth of a market. You can pass your calculations into the script via parameters. Parameters are a way to externally pass information into a script's variable. The parameter means that every instance gets the same value.
When to use:
- If you are running for multiple symbols and every symbol needs to have a different value, you would use User Data.
- If, for each day, you want to change the value of a variable, you could pass that in as a parameter. For example, you may have a script that only runs for a hundred shares one day, but a thousand shares the next day. Rather than changing the script, you would simply change the parameter.