In his case, I agree. Get ningatrader with a cheap datafeed and have it output the signals for you which you can manually enter into sterling. And if you like what you see, you can program something that reads the signals from ninjatrader and have it send the orders for you.
So it does not matter if sterling does not support ninja trader? Is it really possible to grab the signals from ninja trader and send it to sterling for real orders without any lags in time? Thanks again fellas.
You'll need to use a different datafeed like esignal. Then you can find someone to program something to read the signals from ninjatrader and have it send to sterling without lag.
As a "professional" trader, I am paying $335 a month in fees already to echo trade. If I sign up with esignal, they will charge another $335. Echo's quotes are really good. There is no way I can use those quotes huh?
If you are doing any volume, Echo used to rebate all the fees back to you. Did they stop doing that? As for Sterling. Don't even get me started on that POS platform. Our office left Echo back in 2002 b/c of Sterling. Found my way to a firm that is using them now and am reminded daily why we left in 2002. They still suck, and are still the cheapest POS on the street. Add freakn pipe Sterling and stop giving us BS excuses.
Are you trading futures? Just go with NinjaTrader + Mirus or NinjaTrader + Velocity or something like that. They offer intraday margins of $300 or $500. That's plenty of leverage.
Sterling sucks ass, they have been coasting for 8 years while others spend money to evolve/innovate. They deserve to be extinct and I believe within 2 years they will be. Good riddance.
Sterling supports RTD and DDE connections to Excel, but you only have access to quotes and position info. I use the DDE link a lot, it works well. And I just doublechecked, I don't see any way to send orders through it. Also, I don't see how you could use excel to translate the data into something resembling a chart. So I think you're barking up the wrong tree with Excel. A casual perusal of the Ninja Trader site seems like it might work for you. You'd have to manual trade using signals from NinjaTrader to start, but once you've proven that it works automating the order entry/management from those signals wouldn't be that big of a deal. That's the easy part of this project IMO.
With NinjaTrader, you can use one or more built-in indicators and/or custom indicators. In your strategy that you create, you can submit orders based on the indicators. NinjaTrader is free for developing strategies. When you're ready to actually trade using NinjaTrader, then you buy a license. Very simple to do.
Not sure what you guys mean by "not able to send orders from excel"? If you check sterlings website and download the basket example, it shows you how to send orders from excel. If you can tell me how to send orders from excel without having to watch the spreadsheet and press the send button (I want orders automatically sent when conditions are met), then that would help me out a lot.