can someone advice me on how to get started in automated trading? are there any free tools out there that can help me with develop and paper trade strategies? also are there any good books on this topic? thanks
There are plenty of threads on this subject, if you just go back a few weeks. I would tell you to opt for IB, and use their excel API. That's what I did, since I didn't have a background in computer science. Even if you knew nothing about programming, you could still do everything in about two years.