I agree with this. Going with Excel and either the DDE or ActiveX API is risky..and unreliable. Go with Multicharts and the IQFeed real-time data feed...another great combination.
Just bite the bullet and learn some Python. That way you can customize the way you want, you will learn a useful programming language, and you will broaden your horizons.
No room for interpretation beyond spread/volatility. An easy example: If a stock has a bid/ask spread of $0.30 and I'm looking to make $1.00 from the trade.. the risk/reward isn't worth it. A loss would be more than expected and a breakeven likely wouldn't be breakeven due to that spread. An example of this was EL (estee lauder) this morning. The bid/ask spread was like $0.50 on a $80 stock The strategy is very mathimatical and binary, so I don't see how Murphy's law would apply so long as the algo follows the strategy correctly. My backtesting accounts for commissions, poor/no execution, and slippage. I've experienced a lot of this and know any trading system has to account for these inefficiencies that happen in the real world. Thanks for the advice. Followup question: How different is developing algos on excel vs. python? I would be concerned that any skills learned on Excel would not be transferable to Python. Also as others have said, reliability is an issue with Excel.
Question for those of you who are well-versed in Python: How long did it take you to get to a level competent enough to write an algo for your trading that works? Unfortunately, I took Finance in Uni and not programming.
I don't even see that IB has a python based API. https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041
Experienced programmers learning a new language is not the same as someone new to programming, learning a new language. Based on some quick research I just did, I would recommend you learn C#. EDIT: Looks like you may have found a way for Python to work with IB. In that case, learning Python would be quicker than learning C#.