MT4 and MT5 are free because they leave your strategies wide open to the brokers who are paying the freight. Sounds like strategy sucking vampire bats to me. Lol
here we go. i never used AB, but things like scraping earnings,upgrades\downgrades from certain sources into your database\application. stuff like that. just random example. like i said(referring to IB 's TWS)-you can't have it all. sometimes some of the stuff you have to do it yourself. if one can make steady returns out of regular retail soft-good for them(but i never saw any physical proof of that on ET ). as for me-i'm paranoid and control freak. i can only rely on my stuff,where i know every single line of code.
in my case i stuck with the dilemma-i DAY trade huge baskets of stocks thru the day and preparation+ maintenance is a pain in the a**,that takes most of my time. i simply don't have time to keep up with languages. i wish i do..you just can't have it all. development,support,trading,DB maintenance, YOUR BROKER PLATFORM PROBLEMS,taxes, and so on and plus keeping up with new software,languages. .NET-i have it,top of the line LEGAL enterprise version dvd unopened for a decade or so.
How do you day trade stocks while stocks up and down within a day is not that large. In Hong Kong, buy and sell already have 0.2% tax, just constantly earn 0.2% without leverage within a day is not easy.
Thanks APFX, much appreciated! I know of that but it's one side of even driven. I was referring to a different side as scan/exploration checks all symbols (if "Apply to" is set to "Filter" or to "All symbols") regardless if there is a new quote or not. Amibroker took notice of it (see AB forum).
Please correct me if I'm wrong but SC is another platform where you can't backtest/optimize portfolio but baskets only. Also portfolio trading seems not to be possible. I think I have read something about it on their forums few months ago.