By open-loop simulations I mean set up a fully automated strategy with real-time input and paper trade on it for awhile. I am a trading novice (complete), but am a programming and numerical analysis professional. Designing trading systems looks like a fun diversion when I'm not playing poker. What I want to do in the first cut is simply: 1) Access real-time quotes from C++. It looks like interactive brokers has a C++ API. Are there more that offer this kind of service? I prefer to write my own software rather than use some kind of canned packge. IB makes a big deal of requiring you to be an experienced trader in their application. If I admit I am a novice, will they deny my account? If I lie, will they try to verify by calling me up and realizing I don't know a damn thing? Eventually I'd like to close the loop and trade a system, but that's awhile down the road. For now, I just want to tinker with system for awhile to get a feel for the process. I've already got a backtesting setup going smoothly, so the next step is a dry run on incoming data. Any help appreciated.
As a first pass, you can use the free demo account with IB to exercise your API code for development and testing purposes. It's a poor simulation of the real market and useless for evaluating a trading system, but quite useful for unit testing and 'getting a feel' for how it works.
You can use our free public beta www.smartquant.com/quantdeveloper.php This thing does exactly what you are after and works with IB and other providers out of the box. Your feedback will be much appreciated Cheers, Anton
MBT also offers a C++ API (http://sdk.mbtrading.com/). You may also want to consider the (free) trademagic framework which gives you the ability to code to a generic API that supports multiple brokers/data providers (including IB) : http://www.trademagic.net/web/