I have been trading with Scottrade for a few months now with a decent amount of success, but would like to move on to automating my system. After researching for a few days and am somewhat overwhelmed with choices. I also have been having problems determining if any software/broker offers all of my requirements. I have a good background in VB.Net and would prefer to stick with that or maybe Easylanguage, although I am open to attempting to make the move to C/C#. In search of both a new broker and software that I can use for a fully automated trading system. Here is a list of my needs, any feedback or recommendations is appreciated. List of Needs: Fully Automated Trading Heikin Ashi charts Backtesting with tick by tick data instead of only ohlc for each bar Real-time paper trading VB or Easylanguage - don't know C Well documented platform stable platform/broker - no crashes/disconnects I have been looking at TWS, Neo, NT, Tradestation, but cannot determine which one would best suit my needs, or if there is a better one out there that I have overlooked. Sorry for the duplicate post.
I think of the ones you listed, only neoticker and tradestation give you tick-by-tick backtesting. tradestation can't test a portfolio of stocks in backtesting very easily though without extra software. I think all of the above have good documentation. not sure about whether any of them have ansi charts, never heard of those. I have used TWS and tradestation. both are pretty good but TWS is better if you need flexability. it's easier to build a custom application with TWS than tradestation (eg if nobody supports that chart you want, it's quick to build your own). neotrader supports c# and probably vb.net as well... although vb.net and c# are so similiar I doubt you'd have much difficulty with c#. if you end up trading with TWS you could also checkout tradelink which is free, supports tick-level backtesting (including portfolios), and any .NET programming environment (it's written in c# and c++, but you can stay completely in vb.net if you like). http://tradelink.googlecode.com
Please help me to understand this... TradeLink is a "Hub"? ... between TWS and... Is there a charting feature in the package?
tubbs.. I guess if you went to the website you would see both the charting package and the fact that tradelink is broker neutral trading platform. you can build trading apps (or automated or semi-automated strategies) and use them amongst all the brokers tradelink supports... which right now is TWS and assent, next up is sterling/echo.