Fellow BullChart/TradeSim users,

Having familiarized myself with TradeSim Professional Trial edition over recent months, what is clear to me with using TradeSim as a proper back-testing tool is its ability to handle Survivorship Bias (SB). As Dave states in one of his articles, SB does make a difference to the bottom line and NOT including it in one's back testing plans can overstate potential returns and overall performance.

Unfortunately Dave has not updated either the User manual or functionality in TradeSim to account for the fact that the S&P Lists are no longer available free-of-charge on their website as they were years ago. This is a little disappointing, particularly since the software claims to provide this functionality - and although that is technically correct - the way one must now account for SB without the S&P lists is somewhat more complicated than how he programmed it in.

I've managed to get ASX200 historical constituent lists going back to at least 2016, and possibly earlier. I know that BullCharts has the new issues and company name change lists from Actions>Reports>Company Name Changes OR New Issues etc. But I am unsure how accurate this data is.

So my question is: has anyone managed to actually set up SB that is fully functional in TradeSim using other sources apart from the now defunct S&P website data? Does it work and on which Index have you set it up on?

Much appreciated,

bouralex