Now with all you've learned, you can begin to queue up and manage all your wonderful strategy tests. This is done through Portfolio Boss's powerful Divine Engine Queue.

We've talked a lot about The Boss and it's cloud-based computing resources that make it quick and easy to analyze thousands of possible strategies in record time. These same tests can be run at a slower pace on your own personal computer, if it's up to the task. Usually local tests may slow down your computer as they run in the background, but they can be just the right thing for small or simple experiments.

Let's take an in-depth look at the Divine Engine Queue and how it works.

Accessing the Divine Engine Queue

To access the Divine Engine Queue, click on the nested play buttons on the left:

One great feature of the queue is that, now, while Divine Engine tests are running, you can still use Portfolio Boss for other tasks! Manage your portfolio, review other strategies, and even set up other tests all while your queued Divine Engine tests are running in the background.

Divine Engine Queue Basics

At the top is the Start Queue button. This is what will let you launch all strategy tests you have lined up.

Just below is the list of strategies in your queue. The star icon allows you to tag and filter based on your favorite strategies. Click on the down arrow next to the ‘Favorite' header to apply or remove the filter.

You can see where strategy tests will run (either locally, or in the cloud) by viewing the icons under the ‘Type' column. The cloud icon strategies will predictably run in the cloud, and the stacked play buttons indicate the strategies will be run locally.

The current status of your Divine Engine runs is tracked under the ‘State' column, and the Date started shows you when that state was entered into.

This list of strategy tests is limited to show only your most recent tests. You can adjust the size of the historic window show by clicking on the filter / gear icon next to ‘Date queued.' This will show you more (or less) of the strategy test results.

With great power comes great responsibility: keep track of all your great work inside the Divine Engine Queue with succinct memos. The first few words are shown automatically in the list view, and the full memo can be read just by hovering over the memo preview. When you want to add or edit a memo, just click the blue paper and pen icon.

To dive right into the details of a strategy, use the magnifying glass icon. This will load that strategy's parameters and immediately open the ‘Backtest Strategy' portion of Portfolio Boss. The trash icons here will let you clean up strategies you are all done with. Just be sure you don't lose any work, as deletion can't be undone.

The next section below your list of strategy names is the metrics region. Thanks to the dedicated Queue section, we now have much more room to show all the necessary In-Sample (IS) and Out-of-Sample (OOS) metrics you need to make the right decisions.

Clicking on the graph icon on the far left will load that particular generation's parameters into the Backtest Strategy page. Don't forget to use the scroll bar to see more metrics to the right. And of course, you can scroll up and now as normal to view every generation.

And finally, at the bottom of the screen is your Fitness Series graph. You can select and deselect various series, with the most important two being ‘Population Best Fitness IS' and ‘Population Fitness OOS For Best Fitness IS.' Remember, you want both of these to be relatively high and they should be converging together late in the generations (to the right side of the graph).

Running the Queue in the Background

After starting the Queue, you can navigate away and continue using Portfolio Boss. You can't start any other tests when the queue is running, but you can still add new tests to the bottom of the queue. When you are on any other page in Portfolio Boss, you'll see a small double arrow in the top right corner that can be used to expand a Queue status window.

This status window lets you keep an eye on your test progress while getting other work done. Maximum productivity!

You can even add things to your global queue when you are in the Backtest Strategy screen, by first enabling the Divine Engine, clicking on it's drop down, then selecting ‘Queue local test.' CTRL-F11 is the shortcut for this handy feature.

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