Thanks. I need to go ahead and call these companies and find out more about the platforms and other pieces of the puzzle. I'll call Ninja, TradeStation, Multicharts and others tomorrow. Thanks much.
@2weels All of these companies also have extensive websites where you can find their offerings, the software tools they have, and the fees they charge.
Yes, thanks, I should go over those before calling. I may not need to call. But sometimes I feel I can get better "meta info" in a discussion. Guess it dates me that my first instinct is to pick up the phone instead of use the internet. It makes me mad that Google can't be reached by phone. Thank you.
Hello 2weels, I started using NinjaTrader about 6 months ago. So far, I like it. Its doable. I am learning the key thing in developing strategies, is understanding the platform capabilities/limitations (what it does accurate and it what it does inaccurate) as it relate to how I want to trade. Its all about when you click "BackTest" on your platform, do you belive the performance results you are seeing. This mean, I (and you) have to thoroughly test out the back test results. Yes, back test the back test results to measure how accurate your platform is.
Have you tried incorporating your own backtesting, ie. in a function or indicator in NT? When coding in NT I ended up abandoning 450+ individual self-coded indicator classes and just incorporating everything required in 1 indicator class at a time (except for some framework code around current core), bypassing most NT structures allocating my own objects/data. Never got into strategies though, as I wanted to know exactly what the code is doing and not doing. If you can do this and/or backtest in Excel, you are one step further in direction of going the general purpose programming-way (Python, C(++), etc.). But at that later stage it helps to have alot of practical chart experience as you're mostly "blind" to individual instrument timeseries, and then "abandon" charts altogether (they "lie").
That video is a bit outdated now, I doubt many serious developers would choose those platforms to develop their strategies (just MO). I guess they would be OK for entry-intermediate level strategy development You can get data from multiple sources but the most popular seems to be Yahoo Finance and Quandl. Quantopian has minute-level data as standard through Quandl or you can source daily data direct from Quandl yourself. A data provider through your broker such as as CQG can also provide you with historical data and you'll also need to consider how you will create continuous futures contracts from the data unless your high-frequency trading. I assume the toolboxes you're referring to are the broker APIs. These are generally available and in most cases don't require you to develop the API yourself. You will however need to know how to call, manage and use the data with your logic to instruct buy and sell orders which will require you to have a fairly extensive understanding of the programming language. If you dont have the knowledge then it's recommended you do a Python course or hire a programmer that can do it for you. With regards to back-testing, you can build your own which is no easy feat or an you can integrate one of the open source back-testing engines available online. Again, this will require you to have a pretty good understanding of Python and how to handle data with modules such as Pandas etc.
Hello Simples, Sorry, i am confused. What do you mean by "Have you tried incorporating your own backtesting, ie. in a function or indicator in NT?" I simply, develop a strategy using wizard, unlock the code, add some simple special coding for the strategy and click backtest in Strategy Analyzer. I use NT Manage Approach, and keep things unbelievable simple. All I care about is accuracy of the back testing. To achieve this I test sim, real time, against the back test and observe NT capabilities and accuracy.
lovethetrade, you note that this video is dated and serious people would not use those platforms. What do you think are platforms or approaches of choice among serious traders now? Thanks...