I think you are confusing 2 separate issues...The rebate on a short position is one thing,and the cost of leverage another.. When you short a stock,you create a credit balance in your account from th proceeds from the short sale.You ar also charged a borrowing fee,which could be large if there is a short squeeze, and it becomes difficult to borrow.It may also be large if your clearng agent doesnt have very good stock loan agrements. When you refer to leverage,obviously that is just the cost a firm will charge you "borrow"..So you see,levarage and the "price" you are charged to short are not related There is a third "charge" and that relates to the funding spread.Normally there may be a 50 to 100 bps for what you are charged to borrow vs the interest you recieve on cash/credit balances...The quote maye be fed funds or libor based,i.e,libor +50-libor -50... My advice to any and all traders,especially those who do long/short or have low exposure at times is to go over each number with the brokerage/execution firm they have an account at... I would never clear with a firm who rips your face off on the funding spread.It is no diferent than having terrible execution or ridiculously high commisions.trading is a tough business,and we are all looking to gain an edge,not give it away
I've only looked at the program's website for five minutes, so obviously it can be absolutely terrible. But, the "blox" seem to have all the components you want to put into a system. And there is backtesting/optimisation. I'm not quite sure why you think I look confused, I'm only saying I don't know the program very well. I am very much at peace with my life (and trading), thank you.
i knew immediately that my post was too unprecise ... you are perfectly right. and you are right in the need to discuss all cost components. your broker might give you lot of discount on X and gets it all back at Y. additional "cost" factor is the uptickrule ...
Man,my main point is there are software/broker firms out there who derive a significant part of their revenue from the "banking" end of their business... As ou said,they give you X for free,but then they bend you over on Y... One company in particular gives you apx 1.125% on your money,while you borrrow from them at 5% plus...Yeah,they throw in software,but you do the math
if you don't want to learn any languages, maybe you can use excel. tradestations easy-language is also good for begginers. so is wealth lab.
someone mentioned they use python, but if they could choose again, they'd prefer ruby. what? ruby? why? ruby is shit. i don't know why people lose their heads when something new comes. I recommed delphi, python, c++ and R.
i think i got 1.5% spread at trade station. i always thought that was much already ... at the rates you mention it is hard to make any money on shorts. (and it is already hard with better rates ... )
we do stuff in C++, R and others. yet all our trading finally happens over C++. we were never too happy with R's performance when it comes to more data, which inevitably happens intraday. and we use it on macs, thus on unix-basis, which seems to do better in this respect than R on windows. do you trade over R? what are your experiences?
I do not trade. R is for analytics. why would anyone want to analyse data when u can in R/S. can handle huge data and are fast. execution is a different process. it's probably best to link one above with something else. c++ is over-kill. it's like learning chinese to communicate. has no real advantage compared to others at optimal set up. it's waste of life to learn just to execute. only good thing - alot of support on market. and that's because OUTSIDE of the trading community it actually is useful. I personally like delphi best.