Easiest way to work on strategy offline?

[FireFly]

What is the easiest way to work on a strategy when offline?

When developing indicators I can just have a chart with historical data. The same works for stategies, provided that I'm connected to my broker. I can easily add a strategy to my historical chart, put some indicators along with it, etc.

However, when the broker closes down (in the weekend), I cannot do that anymore since the strategies menu is then not availaible. I can use the Strategy Optimizer to display a chart with my strategy, but it's a bit clumsy if you are in early stages of development. I cannot simply change something, recompile and press 'reload' like I can on a normal chart (when connected to the broker).

Is there an easier way to do this?

[FireFly]

Just after posting this, I realized I can simply use the simulated feed!

Thanks anyway

[whitmark]

You can also connect to a Market Replay archive, assuming you have saved one.

[zoltran]

Unfortunately NT forces you to connect to a feed before you can apply a strategy to a chart.
This is big inconvenience during strategy development cycle... often you just want to see how your strategy will act/'plot' on a chart during development.

I have found the best work-around way to do this is to connect to the 'External Data Feed' . (Menu File/Connect/External Data Feed)

On most systems, this is a do-nothing feed... no quotes/ticks . IT won't update your charts, or require you to pre-setup the instrument manager like replay or simulated feed do (which are both great features .. in the right context)

But it does allow you to run your strategies on regular charts 'off-line'. like you want to.

I asked about this before, and was told to use Strategy Analyzer.
This is fine for testing a strategy for performance.. once you've developed it.
However, Using Strategy Analyzer during the strategy development phase is overkill, klunky and can really slow down your productivity.

Hopefully there are some improvements to the NT user interface in this area in the 7.x versions of NT (after NT 6.5...)